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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24484174">The 25 Year Old Virgin</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenunicorn/pseuds/teenunicorn'>teenunicorn</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Neon Genesis Evangelion, Rebuild of Evangelion | Evangelion: New Theatrical Edition</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Boundaries, Depression, M/M, Multi, Sex Work, Sexuality, Slow Burn, Social Anxiety, Therapy, Virginity is a Social Construct, and that's ok, basically SF or silicon valley tech company AU, boundaries are so important guys, but instead of talking about venture capital and software development, consent is SO important, discussions of consent, internalized homophobia or cluelessness idk, no angels (unless you count kaworu but he's human here), no evas and only mentions of gendo, shinji is a mess, shinji is just anxious and very confused about sexuality, shinji really thinks he's straight</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 03:47:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>29,022</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24484174</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/teenunicorn/pseuds/teenunicorn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Shinji is "still a virgin," and his 25th birthday is next week. His all too "helpful" friends and coworkers at the startup he works at, NERV, decide that they know the perfect gift to give him: an expensive date with a sex worker, to help "solve his problem"! But, of course, nothing goes according to plan...</p><p>Very important content contained within: Shinji tries to function as an adult person, Shinji makes new friends, Shinji is endlessly flustered by Kaworu, Kaworu composes a  piano four hands piece for his graduate studies in music, Shinji enjoys cooking, Kaworu struggles to make ends meet in the 2nd most expensive city in the United States, and the whole cast of NGE characters pull some shenanigans, big and small, and navigate relationships of all kinds.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Akagi Ritsuko/Ibuki Maya, Ayanami Rei &amp; Ikari Shinji, Horaki Hikari/Suzuhara Touji, Ikari Shinji &amp; Nagisa Kaworu, Ikari Shinji/Nagisa Kaworu, Makinami Mari Illustrious &amp; Souryuu Asuka Langley, Makinami Mari Illustrious/Souryuu Asuka Langley (Implied)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>86</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Virginity is a Social Construct</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Friday, May 30, 2026</p><p>EDIT: I originally wrote that this took place on May 31st, lol, but I somehow did my math wrong -- it's supposed to be May 30th.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ikari Shinji was, at the ripe age of being nearly 25 years old next week, was a virgin.</p><p>He cringed whenever he said the “v-word” — <em>vagina</em> was much easier, for whatever reason. Maybe it was because whenever doctors asked him if he was “sexually active,” he began to sweat profusely? And then just yesterday, during his physical at a new doctor's office, a nurse had flat out asked him, “Well, are you a virgin?” in the most disdainful tone, which left him in the discombobulated state he was in now.</p><p>Shinji worked at NERV Inc., an up-and-coming tech startup in San Francisco, and to his surprise, he had actually made some friends: Asuka, Mari, Kensuke, Hikari, and Touji, some of his office mates. It helped that his childhood friend Rei, who also worked there, had referred him and they even ended up working on the same floor.</p><p>That moment with the nurse though was so bizarre, (after all virginity was a social construct, he had nearly forgotten until then that people still used the word) he wasn’t sure how to process it without telling someone about it.</p><p>It was Friday, and he hadn’t been able to focus at all during the morning, and now it was lunch time, and he needed to get shit <em>done</em>, before the weekend. So, a few minutes after Shinji sat down at his friends’ usual table in the NERV cafeteria, Shinji began to try to talk.</p><p>“Hey g-guys, you know what was really weird the other day?” He was definitely not the loudest in the group, though he was not the quietest: Rei held that honor. But it was rare for him to speak up, so…</p><p>Asuka sneered at him. “What, Mr. Taciturn has something to say?”</p><p>Mari wrapped herself in a side hug with Asuka. “Princess, be nice to the puppy! He’s silent but very sweet, nya?”</p><p>“What was it, Ikari?” Kensuke asked, looking up from his smartphone screen (likely some alien conspiracy YouTube videos).</p><p>Shinji cleared his throat, and tried to begin again. “Well, umm, at my doctor’s appointment the other day—“</p><p>“Wait, is this going to be gross?” Asuka interrupted, wrinkling her nose.</p><p>“No,” Shinji said, taking a deep breath. “Anyway, so this nurse comes into the exam room, and asks me some routine questions, but then…” he trailed off, not sure if he could just come out and say it.</p><p>Touji asked, “Well, what? What happened next?”</p><p>Shinji paused, trying to muster up as much courage as he could — and he didn’t have much. “W-well, the nurse, she flat out asked me if I was a virgin!”</p><p>“Haha! Serves you right—“ Asuka began to say before Mari smothered her again.</p><p>“That is indeed strange,” a small voice emanated from an as-yet unheard corner of the table. Rei was engaging socially! “They did not even ask you if you were ‘sexually active?’ They literally said ‘virgin’?”</p><p>“Yeah.” Shinji sighed, slumping back into the chair.</p><p>Rei shook her head. “That is quite unprofessional, ‘virgin’ is not even a medical term.”</p><p>“Hey, but like, are you?” Touji blurted out, apparently unable to help himself.</p><p>“Touji!” Hikari scolded. “That’s not the point at all!”</p><p>“No, no, it’s okay.” Shinji looked even more dejected as most of his body was now horizontal in a mega slouch. “Ummm, yeah. I-I am, it’s…true.”</p><p>“Stupid Shinji!” Asuka began laughing before Mari, who was still hugging the other woman, slapped a hand over Asuka's mouth, preventing her from further ridiculing Shinji.</p><p>“Well, I was going to say,” Touji said, giving Hikari a small, but playful, look of annoyance, “why don’t we help you out with that?”</p><p>“Wh-wh-what th-the hell?!” Shinji stuttered in shock.</p><p>Nothing could have prepared him for what he heard next. “We’re not looking for a third, I told you!” Hikari looked pointedly at Touji, not caring about the second shockwave she was sending through the table with <em>that</em> tidbit of information.</p><p>“Whoa whoa whoa, I didn’t say anything about it being me, or,” Touji paused, glancing at Hikari, ”you being the ones actually doing the deed personally. Why not just hire a prostitute?“</p><p>“Wait, isn’t it your birthday next week?” Kensuke asked Shinji.</p><p>“Y-yeah,” Shinji admitted. “It’s next F-Friday.” He had a feeling he knew where they were going with this…</p><p>“That’s perfect!” Touji smiled, and Shinji’s stomach sank. “Why don’t we just hire you a prostitute for your birthday?”</p><p>“Wanna go halfsies?” Kensuke asked him, as Shinji sat there speechless.</p><p>“Sure!” Touji assented.</p><p>“Hey, I don’t want to have to pay for a whole separate gift for stupid Shinji! I want in too,” Asuka had escaped from Mari’s hold.</p><p>“I guess that means I’ll also be joining in, nya?” Mari grinned. “And, I know the purrrrrrrfect agency,” she said, smirking at Asuka.</p><p>“What’s that look for?” Asuka grumbled. “Well, Hikari, are you in?” she asked the last remaining non-Shinji, non-Rei person at the table.</p><p>“I…I guess so.” Hikari sighed in resignation. “What about you, Rei?”</p><p>“I already obtained a birthday gift for Ikari, but thank you,” Rei politely declined, though that surprised no one. She was known for picking out extremely perceptive gifts, despite her silent nature.</p><p>“So it’s settled!” Touji exclaimed.</p><p>“Except for one thing.” Mari smirked and turned to Shinji. “So what’ll it be, nya? Guy, girl, neither, both, trans? The agency I have in mind is verrry inclusive.”</p><p>Shinji could feel himself sweating under her gaze. “G-g-girl, of course!” Shinji stammered out indignantly.</p><p>“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have a prince, Puppy?” Mari teased.</p><p>“Mari, leave the poor man alone! You’re practically sexually harassing him,” Hikari, who was their manager, chastised the other woman. “Anyway, I just hope this isn’t going to be too expensive, we just bought a house!” Hikari and Touji had finally gotten a house for a semi-reasonable price, not an easy feat in SF.</p><p>“Of course not! Thanks to me, we’ll be getting the Makinami Discount.”</p><p>Asuka scoffed. “Eww, just what does that mean, four-eyes?”</p><p>“I have a feeling that I <em>do not</em> want to know.” Hikari waved her hands, shooing away any lascivious details. “Well, it’s settled then!”</p><p>Even while everyone else was feeling Pretty Accomplished (TM), Shinji had a sinking feeling in his stomach as he finally began to eat his lunch: he was certainly not looking forward to his birthday. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Monday Morning Blues</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Monday, June 2, 2020</p><p>Shinji doesn't want to go to work -- but who does, on a Monday? Luckily, there is one cure: coffee!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shinji sat in his fourth floor cubicle at 9:30am. It was Monday. <em>Ugh</em>. And it was not only Monday, Shinji spent the entire weekend cycling between two different arguments in his head. On the one hand, he knew virginity was just a social construct (read: <em>fake as hell!</em>), and it’s okay to be sexually inexperienced! In fact, he found after googling it, studies have shown that “late-bloomers” tend to have better satisfaction in their sex lives anyway.</p><p>But there was always this nagging doubt in the back of his mind, just screaming, <em>Dude, no one is going to want you if you don’t know how to do it! Everyone else will be doing it and then get married and then you will die, all alone.</em> His therapist had told him that voices like these were normal, and a part of being depressed and socially anxious, and even that he didn’t have to identify with them as a part of himself…but it was just so hard to not listen to these thoughts. Shinji cursed his caveman brain for worrying about the saber-tooth tigers hiding in every corner — according to scientists, that was why it was so hard to make your brain stop worrying, because all of the humans whose brains didn't worry got eaten!</p><p>He had explained that to his therapist too, and she just sort of chuckled and said, “Well, why don’t you try this week to notice when you are in that pattern of worrying, and then try to think about something else?” But that was last Thursday — how was he supposed to cope with what happened last Friday with all the birthday present planning?</p><p>He could barely focus on the emails he was trying to answer — he had been answering them since he came in at 8:45am, and he still had 45 left! They always built up over the weekend for some reason. So, he did what any employee does when they couldn’t focus on a Monday morning.</p><p>The coffee break room on fourth floor certainly wasn’t the worst — when he had a meeting with Ms. Katsuragi, his supervisor, on floor 8, she insisted on “treating” him to some of the coffee on her floor (which was free to everyone anyway), and he almost threw up at the sight of all the moldy — moldy!! — dishes in the break room sink. All the break rooms had the usual appliances: a sink, refrigerator, microwave, kettle, and coffee maker, of course.</p><p>The fourth floor, though, had some charm to it that they others lacked — it was fairly tidy (he probably would've asked for a transfer otherwise), one corner held a nice display of multiple kinds of Keurig cups and a Keurig, and next to the Keurig sat a latte machine as well as the kettle and modest tea selection. Sometimes, an overzealous stress baker would leave three dozen cookies for everyone to eat too. Today, though, there were no cookies, but that was alright with Shinji — his stomach was completely twisted in a knot. He was getting anxious just <em>thinking</em> about how anxious he’d be by Friday.</p><p>“Good morning, Ikari,” said a small voice behind him, totally startling him out of his thoughts.</p><p>“Ahhhh!” he yelped in an unmanly (though masculinity was also a social construct!) manner as he jumped, his hand knocking over the mug he had beneath the Keurig and passing through the path of the drip. “Ouch,” he winced, pulling his hand back instantly.</p><p>“Sorry, Ikari, I did not mean to scare you,” the small voice — which he now recognized as Rei’s — apologized. She turned to the sink and began running cold water. He stared at her blankly. “For the burn: put your hand under the cold water,” she finally explained.</p><p>Shinji shook himself as if to shake off his stupor and awkwardly shuffled over to the sink, still nursing his burned hand. He turned towards Rei, who was now uprighting the overturned coffee mug and placing it back under the stream of the Keurig. “Ah, thank you Ayanami! You know, though, after all these years, you would have thought you would have learned to not sneak up on me.”</p><p>Rei laughed softly. “You mean like that time in high school, where I greeted you while you were sharpening pencils, and you spun around so fast you nearly stabbed me with them?”</p><p>“Yeah, or like that time on the middle school trip — we had bunk beds — and I was sleeping in the top bunk but overslept, and you just shook the bed so hard I sat up immediately, convinced it was an earthquake, and slammed my head into the ceiling?” Shinji laughed a little bit himself as he rubbed his forehead with his good hand, remembering how much it stung and throbbed for hours afterwards.</p><p>“I had forgotten about that!” Rei smiled. “You were certainly awake after that, though.”</p><p>“Yep, I really was,” Shinji trailed off, wistfully. “You know, it’s kind of crazy how old we’re getting.”</p><p>“You mean how old <em>you</em> are getting. I’m still 23,” she protested, in a teasing manner. What Shinji loved about Rei — as a friend — was that it was impossible in nearly the first 5-7 years to get to know her, but once you got inside that bubble, she almost seemed like a completely different person. The only funny thing was that she still called him Ikari, after all these years, and he still called her Ayanami, but at this point, it was almost a joke between the two of them. It also made it less weird that they were childhood friends who worked for NERV Inc. on the same floor, on the same projects.</p><p>“Okay, okay, you got me,” Shinji mock-admitted defeat before turning off the water finally and wiping off his hands carefully with a paper towel — the eighth floor did not have paper towels, and they were known to steal the fourth floor’s paper towels and hold them hostage for cookies and printer paper. Shinji sometimes wondered whether or not he had ever left kindergarten.</p><p>“Here’s your coffee.” Rei handed Shinji the mug.</p><p>“Thank you, Ayanami! Should I make you some tea? Chamomile with a half teaspoon of honey?”</p><p>“Thank you for offering, but given that you are already burned, I will put myself in danger this time.”</p><p>“Okay, I’ll see you at lunch,” Shinji said, walking back to his cubicle, head clearer and caffeine surely pumping through his veins any minute now.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Anddddd I'm back! This time, with just some silly shenanigans (aka Shinji being clumsy) as he (in a rather relatable manner) does not want to do work on a Monday morning, lmao. I've actually really enjoyed writing Rei thus far in this fic, and giving her at least some more personality, however subdued. :')</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Therapy for Shinji</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Thursday, June 5, 2026, a.k.a. the day before Shinji's birthday, and also Shinji reluctantly bringing himself to therapy.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>Thursday: therapy day, ugh</em>, Shinji thought to himself. It had been a usual workday — Mari really walking a fine line between sexual harassment and sexual harassment, Asuka being outwardly nasty but otherwise kind of pleasant, Rei quiet and seemingly hardworking, Touji all brawn, Hikari irritated with the whole lot of their inefficiency (“It’s not Friday yet, everyone!” she’d said), and Kensuke wanting to show them during their lunch break conspiracy YouTube videos (he’d been down the rabbit hole <em>again</em>). It wasn’t a <em>bad</em> day, but he just always ended up more tired and just <em>emotional</em> after his therapy sessions.</p>
<p>Shinji clocked out at 4pm, so he would have enough time to make it to his therapist’s office. It was luckily just a fifteen minute walk from NERV Inc., and he usually found the walk refreshing after seven hours of sitting on his ass. Today, though, the sky was incredibly dark and overcast — unusual for Northern California in June. <em>Perfect pre-birthday weather</em>, he thought gloomily.</p>
<p>He sat in his therapist’s office waiting room, anxiously wondering for two minutes whether he had gotten the date wrong, or if his therapist had told him she was going to be somewhere else this week — Dr. Akagi often went on “business trips” for conferences about psychiatry and psychology, though suspiciously these conferences always met in Hawaii.</p>
<p>“Oh, Shinji! Great to see you,” Dr. Akagi greeted him, popping out from the corner. “Come on in,” she said, motioning for him to follow.</p>
<p>Shinji followed immediately — not so much eager for his session, but so that he could get it over with.</p>
<p>“Hi,” he said, not sure what to do with himself.</p>
<p>“Hello, Shinji, so how have you been this week?” Dr. Akagi asked, pen and clipboard at hand.</p>
<p>“So…” he started, taking a deep breath before continuing. “Tomorrow’s my birthday—“</p>
<p>“Yes, I believe you mentioned that in our last session — forgive me for forgetting!” she said, interrupting him. “Happy early birthday!”</p>
<p>“Umm, thank you.” Shinji faltered for a moment, trying to remember what he was going to say. “Anyway, so like I’m a v-virgin—“</p>
<p>“Ah yes, you’ve talked about this before.”</p>
<p>“And for some reason it came up during my lunch break last Friday that I’m a virgin—“</p>
<p>“Wait, whoa, hold up now — how did that come up?” she asked. Sometimes, it felt more like she was fishing for gossip than actually trying to therapeutize him. Why does she keep interrupting me? he wondered, irritated. While the gossip-seeking was not new, the interrupting was.</p>
<p>“Well, actually, I was going to go over that too,” he said. “You went to medical school, right?”</p>
<p>“Yes, psychiatrists after all are medical doctors.”</p>
<p><em>Finally, she didn’t interrupt me — though maybe only to be able to say she’s an MD? Really?</em> “Yeah, so I was at the doctor’s office, and—“</p>
<p>“For what?”</p>
<p>“For my routine checkup!” Shinji felt instantly sorry — almost — when he saw how taken aback Dr. Akagi looked from his outburst. “Umm, sorry,” he mumbled.</p>
<p>“No, I’m sorry — you give me the go ahead next time when you’re finished. Apologies for interrupting,” she replied.</p>
<p>“Okay, so I was at the doctor’s office last Thursday, after our last session, and this nurse keeps on asking me all these questions about nutrition, sleep, etc. All routine stuff. But then,” he pauses, rolling his eyes, “she asks me if I’m a virgin.”</p>
<p>Dr. Akagi sat there, looking at him blankly. “Okay, like, so what I wanted to ask you was: isn’t that weird?” he said, finally giving her the go ahead. “Also thank you for letting me finish.”</p>
<p>“Of course — it’s my job to listen. And that is definitely unprofessional. Have you seen this doctor before?”</p>
<p>“No, this was my first checkup in a while actually — now that I have health insurance through NERV, since my good-for-nothing dad cut me off when I was 14,” he said, rolling his eyes again. “So I really have no idea what to expect, since like this is the first medical appointment I’ve really had — besides flu shots at university — since, well, um…puberty.”</p>
<p>“And how did that make you feel?” she asked. He could have laughed at how much she resembled the stereotype of a psychoanalyst just then.</p>
<p>“Well, shitty, for one.” He didn't bother to censor his language — Dr. Akagi had actually encouraged him to curse if he wanted to. “And also super judged — like who uses the word ‘virgin’ in the year 2020? And we’re in the SF area for god’s sake — like the liberal, gay, social justice capital of America. What gives?”</p>
<p>She laughed. “It’s certainly bewildering. But it seemed like there was something else going on, too, something about your birthday?”</p>
<p>“Oh! Yeah, that, I almost forgot! So after this whole dumb nurse-asking-me-if-I’m-a-virgin thing, someone at lunch — I think it was Kensuke, maybe? — remembered that it was going to be my birthday the next week, and so then a whole bunch of my coworkers decided to order me a prostitute!”</p>
<p>“I believe the more socially acceptable term is sex worker.”</p>
<p>“Well yeah, sex worker! So now a sex worker is going to come over to my apartment tomorrow? And I have no idea what to do!”</p>
<p>“I suppose it’s too late to ask for something else?” she wondered.</p>
<p>“Ugh, well, like, yeah…I think they split it like 5 ways? And I’m sure this kind of thing — which they’re buying with the kind of money NERV is paying us — is not cheap. But I do want to, like, do it! It’s not like I’m asexual — not that there’s anything wrong with that. But everything’s just like…confusing? Weird? Way too fast?” he ended, not sure where to go from there.</p>
<p>“Hmm, well, Shinji, let me ask you something — and you don’t have to answer this, if it makes you uncomfortable,” she paused, looking to him for confirmation to go on. He nodded. “Well,” she continued, “you’ve said before that you’ve never been in a relationship before, not a serious one anyway, and you’ve never really seen a medical doctor all throughout puberty. Have you ever masturbated?”</p>
<p>He felt himself go red hot all over. “Well, like, yeah…like most guys do!” <em>I seem wayyy too defensive,</em> he told himself.</p>
<p>“It’s perfectly normal — for any person, not just guys. Do you feel sexually attracted to anyone?”</p>
<p>“I-I’m straight!” he said convincingly. “N-not that there’s anything wrong with being gay—“</p>
<p>“I’m going to have to call Dr. Ibuki in, to let her know that being gay is wrong,” Dr. Akagi joked, scribbling something in her notes — she and Dr. Ibuki, the clinic’s psychologist, were partners — <em>partner</em> partners. “Well, I’d encourage you to keep an open mind.”</p>
<p>“You’re one to talk,” he mumbled, glancing at the huge rainbow flag that hung on the door.</p>
<p>“Okay — you got me, I’m biased.” She laughed. “I’m just saying that sexuality isn’t that black and white, and like you said, you’re in the most liberal, <em>gay</em>, social justice-y  city in America, possibly the world. Why limit yourself?”</p>
<p>“Hmmmm.” He found himself unable to form a coherent sentence.</p>
<p>“Well, that almost it for our session today,” she said as she glanced at the clock. “Any last words?”</p>
<p>“Ahhhh!” He flopped face-first into a pillow on the couch he was sitting on, and just stayed there.</p>
<p>“Well, I hope you’ll try some mindfulness or something to keep yourself sane over the next 24 hours.” She chuckled, studying him as he seemed to play dead.</p>
<p>“Aghhhhhhh!” he groaned into the pillow, unable to string together a more coherent sentence to express his anxiety.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I have <em>a lot</em> of chapters planned for the coming days, as in <em>four</em> whole chapters coming out tomorrow. For the time being, I still plan to release chapters on the date they supposedly occur, but with the volatility of the United States, where I happen to reside, at the moment, this may take a back burner to other things. (I do have 14 chapters total written so far, so delays shouldn't start happening for a few weeks unless I am otherwise unable to upload.) Please stay safe and stay informed everyone! &lt;3</p>
<p>Also, it sort of killed me to write this many chapters before Kaworu even appears as a character, but he's going to make his entrance soon! I promise. :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Rei's Gift</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Friday, June 6, 2026: Happy birthday, Shinji!</p>
<p>Shinji's not excited at all about his birthday, but Rei gets him a gift that cheers him up a little. :)</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is part 1/4 of Shinji's birthday chapters. ^_^</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shinji woke up at the crack of dawn to light streaming in from the window and directly onto his face.</p>
<p>“Curse these east-facing windows,” he grumbled, pulling the covers up and over his head. It didn’t do much to block out the light. “Well, happy fucking birthday to me.”</p>
<p>He tried unsuccessfully to try to fall asleep again for fifteen minutes before finally admitting defeat — he was, indeed, fully awake — and decided to get dressed, and make himself a decent breakfast for once. He loved cooking — at first, it was just a necessity, since his dad wanted nothing to do with him and sent him to live with his aunt and uncle, who just used him as a housekeeper and personal chef, but in college, his first taste of freedom, he had started actually really enjoying the process of cooking — especially for friends, who were often awed by his skills, having stay-at-home moms that did all the cooking for them.</p>
<p>He started the rice cooker, and started chopping up some veggies, moving to stir-fry them on a pan. Once that was done, he set a pot to boil and plopped a heaping spoonful of dashi, miso paste, and began to fry a couple of eggs, and then one more, and thanks somewhat to the shitty slowness of the electric range that came with the apartment, right as he had finished up the eggs and the miso soup, the rice cooker beeped to tell him it was done. Shinji clicked the little button at the top of the rice cooker, taking a rice paddle and fluffing up the newly steamed rice. “Mhmmm,” he couldn’t help but say — there was something so satisfying about a newly cooked batch of rice from a rice cooker.</p>
<p>After he finished eating and washed and dried all the dishes, as he was putting them away — he couldn’t stand to have a messy kitchen — he looked around his apartment, somewhat embarrassed by the lack of tidiness here and there. He glanced at the clock — it was only 7:30am, and he didn’t need to be at work until 9am, and he already had his lunch for the day wrapped up in the fridge, ready to go.</p>
<p>“Oh, what the heck,” he said to himself as he rushed to tidy up the apartment. His apartment was small — <em>damn you, SF</em> — but it also had a great view of the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge — <em>bless you, SF</em>. He wasn’t exactly sure how he had scored such a place, his rent was even that bad — for San Francisco, anyway. But as he haphazardly tossed things here and there — especially in the anxiety-fueled moping of the last week — it built up way too fast, and he had been in too much internal turmoil to properly deal with the mounting mess. Now he was going through it with zeal: a stray sock here, a novel he was pretending to read there, a bunch of cards he’d left on the coffee table, midway through playing out of boredom and sheer anxiety, etc. After Shinji straightened out the couch cushions, he took a final survey of the place.</p>
<p>“Perfect!” he said aloud, only to himself, pleased with how neat it was looking. He glanced at the clock again — only 7:45, and he didn’t have to catch his bus until 8:30! “Ughhh,” he groaned, flopping onto the couch, disarraying it a bit. He checked the time on his phone: 7:46am. “I guess I could vacuum and clean the bathroom,” he decided, even though he had vacuumed the day before, and cleaned the bathroom on Wednesday.</p>
<p class="separator">~~~</p>
<p>He clocked in at work at 8:59am, and was incredibly relieved — but also the tiniest bit disappointed — that no one else was there yet. Coffee in hand, he went to his cubicle and tried to get to work. He ended up just checking and responding to his emails — even the junk ones, just out of boredom and nerves, gulping down his coffee like a dehydrated marathon runner. Once he had depleted his “life water,” he immediately went to the break room for another…and another…and another, and then he had to go to the bathroom and his hands where shaking from all the caffeine. “Shit, this time I’m getting decaf, or better yet, herbal tea,” he mumbled as he made his fourth trip to the break room. But this time, someone else was there — Rei!</p>
<p>“Good morning, Ayanami!” Shinji greeted her.</p>
<p>“Oh, Ikari! Good morning — wait here,” she said as she left the room. He got to work on brewing his tea, and the kettle just started to boil as she returned, a slightly larger than a bread box-sized package (if we’re playing 20 questions) wrapped in paper covered in cats playing the cello, and wrapped with a bow. “Happy birthday!” she said, with more emphasis than he had heard from her in a while, and handed him the package. It was heavy.</p>
<p>“Whoa, what the heck is in here?” he wondered aloud, carefully setting it down on the rickety break room table as he turned to make his tea. “You make carrying that look easy, Ayanami!”</p>
<p>“I work out sometimes,” she shrugged. “Go ahead, open it!”</p>
<p>“Okay, okay,” he laughed, leaving his tea to brew. He carefully undid the wrapping paper — it felt expensive, and it was so cute! He wistfully looked down at the cellos — he ought to have practiced more than he had the past few months — and opened up the box inside. “Whoa, a dutch oven?!” It was a handsome, heavy, cast-iron thing, 6 quarts, according to the bottom, and with a red enamel color. “I’ve always wanted one of these! Rei, you’re a genius, thank you so much — but you shouldn’t have!” Shinji lamented, remembering the $300 price tags he’d seen at Williams-Sonoma that crushed his dreams of ever owning one.</p>
<p>“Don’t worry — this is not one of the fancy french ones or whatever, but it is real cast-iron, and it will work exactly the same, without the huge price tag,” Rei reassured him. “It had excellent reviews.”</p>
<p>“Oh my god, thank you so much! Can I give you a hug?” he asked, shyly.</p>
<p>She smiled. “Of course! Happy birthday.” They hugged, short and sweet.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'm actually not very good at all at gift giving myself, so when I wrote the first chapter, which mentions that Rei is famous among them for buying very well-suited gifts, my blood pressure probably spiked a little lmao at the thought of having to come up with something. To my relief, I came up with Rei getting him a dutch oven -- which imo is a confusing name for those ceramic glazed (usually red or blue), cast-iron pots with the lids -- in the shower lol.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Platonic Public Displays of Affection</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>It's Shinji's birthday, which means he needs to be publicly sung to and embarrassed by his friends and coworkers, of course!</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is part 2/4 of Shinji's birthday chapters!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A little bit after noon, Shinji was eating alone in the cafeteria when he saw a huge group of people moving as one mass, coming towards him, and one of them, distinctively, was a redhead.</p>
<p>“Hey, stupid Shinji! Make some room, will ya?”</p>
<p>“Is that any way to talk to the <em>puppy</em> on his <em>birthday</em>?”</p>
<p>“Yo, Shinji! Happy birthday, man!” Touji grinned from ear to ear.</p>
<p>“Ah, thanks guys!” Shinji nervously replied.</p>
<p>“You know what we’re gonna have to do,” Hikari warned him, as they circled around the table.</p>
<p>“Oh no,” Shinji said, blushing.</p>
<p>“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!” they began to raucously sing. He was surprised that Kensuke could carry a tune, and nervously, he spun around in his chair to see others in the cafeteria joining in too. “Happy birthday to—“</p>
<p>“Stupid!” Asuka cut in.</p>
<p>“Darling Puppy Boy, who is not stupid!” Mari corrected.</p>
<p>“Shinji,” they all sang in unison once more, “happy—— birthday to you!” The entire cafeteria erupted in clapping and whistling.</p>
<p>“Thank you so much, guys-“ Shinji started to say, bright red in the happy embarrassment of being very publicly shown affection by your peers — which is embarrassing as <em>hell</em>, but you get a feeling that hey, they might actually <em>care about you</em> (what do you know? people actually care about people maybe!), as they all began to sit down.</p>
<p>“Whoa whoa whoa, don’t any of you read your emails?” Misato suddenly appeared behind Asuka and Mari. “I told you to wait until 12:30!”</p>
<p>“But it’s 12:45,” Kensuke pointed out.</p>
<p>“Whatever! Hyuga?” she said, ignoring him. Her right-hand man, Hyuga, came forward, carrying a white box. She had him set it on the table before opening it, revealing a cake — complete with a 2 candle and a 5 candle. “Happy birthday, Shinji!”</p>
<p>“Wow, how’d you know?” Shinji was surprised — he almost never interacted with his supervisor, Katsuragi Misato, who insisted that everyone — including Shinji — call her Misato.</p>
<p>“A little birdie told me,” she said in a faux mysterious tone — everyone knew it had to be Hikari, she was always trying to get them to have a little more spirit and company perks.</p>
<p>“Thank you so much, Misato!” Shinji beamed as he looked at all these people who apparently cared about him. (Who would have thought!) “Umm, does anyone have a knife?” Everyone stared at him blankly. “For the cake?” he tried again.</p>
<p>Misato seemed to consider this for a second, before it began to click in her brain.</p>
<p>“Umm, I think there’s knives that we can get? Because it’s a cafeteria?” Hikari offered, helpfully.</p>
<p>“Yes, that would be great, Hikari! Thank you for that suggestion,” Misato finally said. “Please go get them, and Hyuga, help her!”</p>
<p>They scrambled away, Hikari jumping out of her seat to do so.</p>
<p>“And bring some plates!” Misato called after them.</p>
<p class="separator">~~~</p>
<p>After some — somewhat messily distributed, but nonetheless delicious — cake, Mari stood up. “It’s present time!” she declared.</p>
<p>Shinji, for probably the millionth time, was very much flushed. “Really, you don’t have to,” he automatically started to say, slipping into his self-effacing persona out of embarrassment.</p>
<p>“Not when we dropped this much cash on your present, Puppy Boy,” Mari said with a wink. “Here!” She presented him with a small gift bag, covered in cellos wrapped in bows — Haha, people really only know one thing about me, don’t they? he thought as he pretend-reluctantly accepted the bag.</p>
<p>“Aww, thanks guys.” Shinji tried to put the bag on the table, but Kensuke just plopped it back in his lap again.</p>
<p>“Go ahead, open it!” he told Shinji.</p>
<p>“Alright, alright,” Shinji relented. There was tissue paper inside, and a card. When he opened the card, he realized it had been signed by all of them, and they even wrote him little messages, too!</p>
<p>“Happy birthday, stupid Shinji! Hope you have a stupid — I mean good (Mari made me write “good”) — evening -Asuka”</p>
<p>“Dear Puppy Boy, happy birthday! Hope you like your present!! 😉 😘 I’m certain your present will like you. 😉 -Mari”</p>
<p>“Happy birthday, Shinji! Remember — bros before hoes, but we’ll let you pick hoes just this one time, ha! -Touji”</p>
<p>“Dear Shinji, happy birthday! Please stay safe and don’t do anything you’re uncomfortable with. But also, have fun! -Hikari”</p>
<p>“Happy birthday, Shinji!!!! Hope you have fun! -Kensuke”</p>
<p>“Aww, thanks guys!” Shinji said, almost setting down the card.</p>
<p>“Wait!” Mari stopped him. “First, you’ve gotta look at the back of the card.”</p>
<p>He flipped it over — written in blue pen, was a phone number: (650) 555-0913. “There’s a phone number?” he asked.</p>
<p>“Yeah, your ‘date' will text you from there to let you know when they’re at the apartment, so you can let them in. The ‘date’ is scheduled for 8pm,” Mari told him.</p>
<p>“Hope that’s not too late for you, old lady Shinji,” Asuka teased.</p>
<p>“No, umm, that’s perfect,” Shinji mumbled, ignoring the “old lady” comment.</p>
<p>“And, there’s more stuff in the bag!” Touji pointed out.</p>
<p>“Huh, really?” Shinji wondered aloud as he rummaged some more through the tissue paper, to find…a bottle of liquid? And some small, plastic square packages…oh.</p>
<p>“Condoms and lube!” Mari beamed. “Essential for any sexual encounter.”</p>
<p>“It was my idea,” Touji butted in.</p>
<p>“Thank you! So much, really.” Shinji laughed, blushing again. “I can’t believe I forgot about this, what with all of the obnoxious health classes in high school.”</p>
<p>“Your ‘date’ will probably bring their own, but I also think it’s sexier if you don’t burden women with having to always provide contraception and lube,” Hikari declared, giving Touji a not-so-subtle jab to the ribs with her elbow.</p>
<p>“Oww! I-I mean yeah, of course! Feminism is sexy,” Touji echoed, very convincingly.</p>
<p>“That’s some good advice, thank you, Hikari.”</p>
<p>“I think there’s actually more lube in there,” Kensuke said. Shinji went fishing around in the tissue paper, and pulled out yet another bottle of lube, of a different brand.</p>
<p>“You can never have enough lube~” Mari sang, as everyone laughed, including Shinji.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I'm a Big Fan of people including lube and condoms in their smut. Even though I'm not planning to include smut in this particular fanfic, lube and condom representation is important, lmao.</p>
<p>Also, I enjoy writing Touji and Hikari's interactions far too much.</p>
<p>Parts 3 and 4 are coming soon! (I just need to sleep lol.)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. How To (Not) Prepare for a Date</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Shinji second-guesses literally everything in a fit of anxiety before his 'date' arrives.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is part 3/4 of Shinji's birthday chapters!</p><p> </p><p>Warnings: nonconsensual kissing</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shinji’s phone said it was 6pm by the time he made it back home — due to rush hour traffic, and his new dutch oven: lugging it up the stairs to his apartment was really no fun. He set down the gifts on the counter and set to work making dinner, checking the time every twenty seconds. After eating — and also checking his phone every thirty seconds — he made room in his cupboards (<em>thank god this apartment has a lot of storage!</em>) for the dutch oven, and put the condoms, lube, and more lube in his bedside table.</p><p>He checked his phone again, and groaned when he realized that there were a full hour and twenty-two minutes before his ‘date’ or whatever arrived. He’d already cleaned up the kitchen, after eating, and even wiped down all the surfaces.</p><p>“Maybe I should take a shower?” he wondered aloud to himself. “…yeah I should definitely take a shower.”</p><p>Shinji tried to stretch out the shower as long as he could, but being naked — cause, like, it’s a shower — just made him start worrying like crazy. <em>What if she thinks I’m fat? Well, actually, I’m not fat…though I’m not buff either. But, what if she thinks my dick is too small? Or too big, which is unlikely, I think? I mean I’ve seen other dicks — NOT IN THAT WAY — but it’s not like I was holding up a ruler to theirs and memorizing the measurements, come to think of it I’ve never measured mine…</em></p><p>Once he was clean, he decided he’d had enough of his thoughts while naked and got out of there as soon as he could. After putting on some loungewear temporarily — he felt like he should dress up for later, but deciding what to wear made him too anxious at the time and he just wanted to be Not Naked — he stared at his face in the mirror, trying but not trying to do something with his hair, and occasionally trying a smile or a pose. He checked his phone again — only 7:02pm.</p><p>“Ugh…oh, I know! I’ll brush my teeth,” he said, feeling kind of silly for feeling proud for remembering that dental hygiene was important for kissing. “It’s really been a long time since I’ve done stuff like this,” he reminisced aloud to himself as he began to brush his teeth. He’d had girlfriends in high school — well, one girlfriend — and they had kissed a bit, a couple of times (it had been nice!), but he’d just been too busy (read: depressed) in college to really find anyone, or for anyone to find him.</p><p>After brushing and flossing, he decided to ride out his faux-productive-I-know-what-I’m-doing-of-course-hahahaha high (and kill more time) by running to the pharmacy downstairs and getting some mouthwash for good measure — he’d been meaning to buy some anyway.</p><p class="separator">~~~</p><p>It was 7:55pm, and Shinji had brushed, flossed, gargled mouthwash, moisturized — since he was always forgetting to — and wandered around the apartment straightening things up over and over again when he finally got a text.</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">(650) 555-0913: </span>
  <span class="text">Hello! I’m downstairs, could you buzz me in please?</span>
</p><p><em>Oh my god, she’s early!</em> Shinji thought, panicked — though he had been “ready” for probably the last half hour or so. He hit the buzzer and texted her back.</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">Yep, just did! There’s no elevator, unfortunately, though thankfully I’m only the third floor!</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">(650) 555-0913: </span>
  <span class="text">🙂 thanks for letting me know!</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">(650) 555-0913: </span>
  <span class="text">3003, right?</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">yep!</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">(650) 555-0913: </span>
  <span class="text">on my way up!</span>
</p><p>Shinji, for the thousandth time that day, had a panicked thought: <em>Wait, should I prepare refreshments? Would that be rude of me? How are you suppose to invite a pr-I mean, a sex worker into your apartment—?</em> Thankfully, he was interrupted by a knock on the door.</p><p>“Coming!” he called out, as he moved to get up. As he approached the door, he was struck by yet another worry: <em>What if it’s a murderer!!! I’m letting a stranger into my apartment, what the hell? I knew I should have gone with the apartment that had a peephole in the door…</em> He opened the door anyway, lost in thought—</p><p>Slam! Shinji found himself backed up against the wall of his apartment’s entrance hallway, and would have thought, <em>Oh god, I am really about to be murdered!</em> if it weren’t for soft lips on his that tasted a bit fruity. <em>Strawberry, or maybe raspberry? Maybe both</em>, he thought, but in any case, they were soft and moving against his own and he really felt like a virgin — because he was — and he only hoped he was reciprocating in a halfway decent way. She’d intertwined her fingers in his right hand, and her other hand was actually on his ass, and Shinji realized that his left hand was dangling useless so he brought it up around her neck to deepen the kiss, groaning at the sensation.</p><p>But the hair he grabbed at on her neck felt really short, and her shoulders just a tad broad. Shinji opened his eyes — which he had only just become aware that he’d closed — and felt like he had been slammed into the wall again at the sight he was greeted by. Pale gray hair, indeed short, but super soft and tousled in just the right way, and the palest skin he’d ever seen. He wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or not, or maybe being kissed by a ghost. But then they opened their eyes, just a bit — bright red, a gaze that could suck you in and keep you captive, as they moved to kiss down Shinji’s throat.</p><p>“Wait, wait, stop,” Shinji scrambled to push the stranger off of him, though he wasn’t sure that he wanted them to stop — <em>Wait, I’m straight, aren’t I?</em> the invasive thought injected itself into his stream of consciousness. He felt almost bad, as they looked at him, somewhat confused. But they were indeed at least masculine-presenting. “W-what the hell is going on?!”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Shinji Makes a New Friend</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Shinji has better luck than Holden Caulfield at getting a sex worker to talk to him, and maybe even gains a new friend in the process?</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is the last chapter for Shinji's birthday. :)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What’s wrong?” Shinji’s ‘date’ asked. “You’re Shinji, and you go by he/him, right? Oh god, I hope I didn’t end up at the wrong place…“ They began fretting, and if Shinji wasn’t busy being confused himself, he might have seen that they looked rather concerned.</p><p>Now Shinji was <em>immensely</em> confused. “Umm, actually, yeah, I am.”</p><p>“And it’s your birthday, right? Happy birthday, by the way!” they added awkwardly.</p><p>“Yeah, and um, thank you! It is, but like,” Shinji paused, not sure how to put this, “I’m straight?”</p><p>They seemed to consider this. “Hmm, that might indeed be a problem — let’s start over. I’m Kaworu, he/him or they/them if you’d like, pleasure to meet you,” he said, reaching out a hand.</p><p>Shinji shook it, though he was still very, <em>very</em> confused. “Shinji, he/him, though, you already knew that,” he laughed, hoping he wasn’t coming off nearly as awkward as he was being. <em>Oh god, I’ve been misgendering them in my head all this time…do I apologize for that?</em> “Sorry!” he blurted out, before he could decide whether that was really necessary or not.</p><p>Now Kaworu looked <em>really</em> puzzled. “For what?”</p><p><em>Why did I open my mouth?</em> Shinji cast about for a way to say this. “Well, umm, I was expecting a woman, or well not a—“</p><p>“A gigolo?” Kaworu teased, a smirk on his lips.</p><p>“Umm y-yeah, I guess, and since you, uh, kind of surprised me, I was misgendering you all this time…in my head…I guess.”</p><p>Kaworu laughed. “It’s okay, I’m sure this is very confusing, since I am also extremely confused.”</p><p>“Ahah,” Shinji chuckled along awkwardly. He couldn’t help but stare at the other man — he was dressed all in black, from a black leather jacket to black skinny jeans and black Doc Martens, which just made him seem all the paler. Kaworu was also just immensely handsome, like <em>model</em> handsome, not that Shinji found him attractive or anything…!!! “Umm,” Shinji started to say, trying to get his head out of his thoughts. “Do you normally just…pounce on your clients like that?”</p><p>Kaworu laughed again — Shinji was really starting to like the sound of his laugh. <em>Wait, no, don’t think that, that’s weird!!!</em></p><p>“No, actually, this was per request, which is also what makes this very perplexing. I was told that you were just a shy, very cute puppy boy who really, really wanted a prince to sweep him off his feet, and that you’d consented to someone making at big first impression — in other words, ‘pouncing’ on you.”</p><p><em>Oh god, well, at least I know who probably is to blame for this.</em> “It wasn’t someone named Mari who put in all these details, was it?” Shinji asked, cautiously.</p><p>“Oh, yep, it was Mari alright — she’s always trying to get me set up.” He laughed. “I really should have seen this one coming.”</p><p><em>I’m going to kill her!</em> “You know Mari?” Shinji asked, hoping he was masking his murderous rage.</p><p>“Oh, yeah, we’ve were childhood friends, actually, the only two Japanese kids in our elementary school here in a small suburb in NorCal!”</p><p>“How’d you end up in sex work?” Shinji blurted out before he could stop himself. <em>Oh my god oh my god oh my god—</em></p><p>“I’m actually a masters student at San Francisco Conservatory of Music,” Kaworu explained, cool as ever, “studying composition for piano.”</p><p>“Wow, that’s so cool! I play the cello.” <em>Why can’t I stop myself from just saying things at this guy?</em></p><p>“Haha, thank you, though it definitely doesn’t pay the bills. Mari knew of the escort company I now work for, and said it was known to be reputable. And, since I’m good with people, generally, and it doesn’t hurt to be bad at sex, they ended up hiring me,” he explained. “We should duet sometime.” Kaworu was smirking, <em>again</em>.</p><p>Shinji, staring at his lips, couldn’t help but remember just how soft they were. “I-I’m really not that good,” he stammered out, embarrassed he’d ever mentioned that he played. <em>He’s probably like 1000x better than I am!</em></p><p>“Nonsense, it’s not like I was a piano <em>performance</em> major,” Kaworu said. “And, I’m not a very good composer either. I actually really want to teach people how to play the piano.”</p><p>Shinji had to actively restrain himself from begging to be Kaworu’s first student, though he’d never desired to play the piano in his entire life. “I’m sure you’re amazing! But that also sounds cool, and probably lucrative around here.”</p><p>Kaworu shrugged. “I actually really like working with people to get them to do what makes them happy, you know?”</p><p>“Gosh, I wish I could do something like that with my life.” Shinji sighed. “I just, I dunno, program computers or something and write emails to people all day.”</p><p>“You could end up making someone happy, too, nonetheless! I was going to say earlier, but thought better of it, since you said you’re straight and I would be poaching a potential client, that I keep hoping to meet a nice, cute programmer boy to settle down with, and you seemed to fit the bill, but oh well.” Kaworu laughed.</p><p><em>Wait, what? He can’t possibly be into me, like why in hell would anyone be into me? He must be joking…</em> Shinji felt his legs wobble a bit.</p><p>“Whoa!” Kaworu rushed forward to stabilize Shinji before he fell. “Are you okay?”</p><p>“Yeah, umm, it’s been a long day,” Shinji mumbled, finding himself wrapped up in the other man’s scent as Kaworu pulled out a chair for him and he plopped down, gratefully, into it. <em>He smells, like, really good,</em> his dazed mind thought before he snapped out of it, noticing that Kaworu was still standing. “You can, umm, sit down too!” Shinji said, not wanting to be a bad host. “O-or you could also leave, cause I’m sure that this is boring—“</p><p>“No, not at all! It’s nice to meet new people.” Kaworu grinned as he pulled out a chair for himself, taking off his shoes. “And, you’re my last job of the day, and it’s already been all paid for.”</p><p>Shinji blushed, looking down at his feet as he tried to keep from being too light headed. “You didn’t mean it, right?” he asked, suddenly.</p><p>“Mean what? Meeting new people?”</p><p>“Well not that, but like, what you said earlier? ‘Cute programmer boy’? But…I’m not cute.”</p><p>Kaworu seemed to completely freeze up, and then very seriously, looked Shinji right in the eye. “Shinji, take it from me: you’re cute. Mari also said that you’re really cute, and she and I have some of the highest standards out there. I would <em>never</em> lie about a boy being cute, scout’s honor,” he said with a mischievous grin as he held up three fingers in the Scout Sign.</p><p>Shinji blushed. <em>This guy!</em> “Wait, are you gay, then?” Shinji asked, wanting to change the subject since the red creeping down his neck wasn’t making him very intelligent at the moment (and even forgetting to not pry too much into Kaworu’s life).</p><p>“Hmm, well, yes, since as Mari — and many others besides her — would say, everyone is a little bit gay.” Kaworu smiled, seemingly happy to just share whatever information about himself. “I actually identify as pan, though, but with a preference for men and masculine people? Sexuality’s weird,” he said with a shrug.</p><p><em>He really is an open book, huh!</em> “Mari really does want everyone to be gay…I just don’t think I am,” Shinji said, uncertainly. <em>Why am I talking about this? I’m sure that Kaworu doesn’t want to hear about how I’m probably straight. Talk about queer-baiting, and maybe even seeming homophobic!</em> “Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay!”</p><p>“No offense taken,” Kaworu said gently. “Mari is a bit over-zealous.”</p><p>“Is she ever! But, she does keep things interesting,” Shinji admitted. “I told her that I’m straight…did she really not even try to get a female escort?”</p><p>“The escort service’s female escorts were actually all booked for today, but Mari assured me that you were bi.” Kaworu turned a bit, red, and let out a sigh. “I’m really, really sorry about that — this is the last time I’ll believe her about someone else’s sexuality.”</p><p>“Agh, I’m really going to need to have a word with her,” Shinji groaned, just thinking of what the <em>hell</em> would he do this Monday.</p><p>Kaworu looked at him, concerned. “Sorry this wasn’t the happy birthday you wished for,” he said.</p><p><em>Now I’m being such a downer, and Kaworu’s actually been pretty nice to me!</em> Shinji scrambled to make his somewhat unexpected guest feel better. “No, no! This has been nice, actually — I’ve barely made any friends since I’ve moved to San Francisco a few months ago — not that umm I didn’t mean to be presumptuous—”</p><p>“Shinji, it is my <em>honor</em> to be considered your friend.” Kaworu stood up and made a little mock bow. “As long as you’ll have me, of course.”</p><p>“Yeah, no! You seem really cool, Kaworu,” Shinji said, admitting it finally to Kaworu, and to the air — and himself. “I’m kind of glad this happened, actually, cause, like, I’m, umm, not that…ex-experienced.”</p><p>“No shame in that,” Kaworu assured him, shrugging. <em>Ha, well I guess it’s easy for him to say!</em> Shinji remarked.</p><p>“There’s a lot of emphasis on sex in the media,” Kaworu continued, “and in our culture, and sure, it can be good, but there’s a lot of other important and fun things one can do.” His expression suddenly changed, gray eyebrows furrowing over those red irises. “I’m glad that you stopped me earlier — I would have felt absolutely awful if I had stepped over your boundaries.” Shinji felt himself growing hotter, despite Kaworu’s serious tone, remembering their encounter earlier.</p><p>Just as quickly as he had shifted from philosophical to serious, Kaworu's mischievous grin was back. “And, you seem like a quite intriguing individual yourself.” </p><p>“I’m not, really!” Shinji tried to stave off any unwarranted praise. “I don’t really do a lot besides cello and work, and worrying and cleaning too much…” <em>Now I’m really oversharing, and he’ll realize that I’m really Not That Cool!!</em></p><p>“Nonsense, I think that you have your own worldview, which is beautiful in its own right.” Kaworu seemed to effortlessly let the words roll off of his tongue.</p><p>Shinji was completely taken aback. “H-how do you just say stuff like that?”</p><p>Kaworu seemed to consider this. “Hmm, well, it’s what I think, and then I just say it. Part of it is that I’m good at communicating — it’s a job requirement for both, after all — but I also truly believe that.”</p><p>Shinji smiled and shook his head. <em>I really cannot believe this guy!</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And finally, that's it for Shinji's birthday! It's so funny how these dates are like holidays or something, for fandom. I have like 7-8 more chapters up my sleeve, though, and plenty more planned, because Shinji's blood pressure is definitely skyrocketing at the thought of having to talk to his coworkers, especially Mari.</p><p>Lol IDK, just as a person who identifies as non-binary there are all sorts of funny little things that come about when you're trying to mesh culture and language with intellectual knowledge about non-binary genders. Maybe this is only funny to me? Who knows. Gender is Weird. (Though this fic is really more about how Sexuality is Weird, I really cannot resist.)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. The Morning After</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Saturday, June 7, 2026: Shinji isn't sure what to make of last night, and what's more, he definitely doesn't know what to do about Mari. Meanwhile, Kaworu's distracted from his work for his masters thesis by thoughts about the boy he met last night.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shinji woke up the next Saturday morning at 11am, feeling like he’d gotten zero sleep. He really did not want, well, actually, <em>never wanted</em> to admit if Asuka was right about something, but he really did feel like he was getting old. <em>How the heck did I pull off all nighters in college?</em> he thought blearily.</p>
<p>Shinji’d stayed up talking with Kaworu until 12:30am, about everything and nothing, finding talking to someone who wasn’t his coworker or therapist or childhood friend refreshing, but also just Kaworu himself was an oddball. Every time Shinji felt like he maybe understood some part of him, Kaworu provided his own perspective that Shinji’d never thought of before. And what’s more, when Kaworu finally left, it wasn’t as if he said, “See ya never,” but…</p>
<p><em>Kaworu glanced at his watch (who wears a watch these days? It wasn’t even a smart watch!), and remarked it was time to go. Shinji couldn’t help feeling absolutely crushed, the sinking feeling in his stomach surprising him.</em> It’s not as if he promised to just stay up all night talking to me, <em>he thought.</em></p>
<p>
  <em>But then, Kaworu said, “You know, I wouldn’t have stayed necessarily if it were anyone but you. You even told me that I could go, if I wanted to!” As the other man laughed, lightly — not at Shinji, but good-naturedly — Shinji blushed.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“Good thing I already have your number, I’ll have to invite you over sometime soon so that you can finally play one of those indie horror games,” Kaworu said. He was apparently a big fan of horror games, which Shinji had always been intrigued by, but was way too scared to actually play, <strong>especially</strong> by himself.</em>
</p>
<p><em>“I’d rather just watch you play!” Shinji blurted out.</em> Wait that sounds too creepy wait a second—!!! <em>“Umm, I mean, if that’s okay with you — I’m just not very good at games,” he tried to clarify.</em></p>
<p>
  <em>“Of course, that would be fun too.” Kaworu smiled, apparently unfazed. “Goodnight, Shinji,” he said as Shinji opened the door.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>“G-goodnight!” Shinji replied as Kaworu gave a little wave, and left.</em>
</p>
<p>Shinji ran this scene — and every scene from last night — over and over in his mind, replaying them in what felt like vivid detail. “Just what’s with this guy?” he wondered aloud. “It’s like way too easy to talk to him.” And Shinji was <em>not</em> good at talking to people, <em>ever</em>.</p>
<p><em>Isn’t that why dad left me?</em> a small but dangerous thought poked its head out like a devilish ground-dwelling rodent, and Shinji was super tired of playing whack-a-mole.</p>
<p>“Ugh, and I’ll have to explain on Monday what actually happened!” he said aloud to himself, exasperated. “Maybe I should just lie? But first…”</p>
<p>Shinji got out his phone, and went straight for the messages app, and typed in “M-a-r” into the search bar before “Mari Makinami” came up.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">WhaT THE FUCK?!</span>
</p>
<p><em>Do I know her well enough to send her a text like this?</em> Shinji thought, and then with a shrug, hit <em>send</em>. <em>She certainly didn’t know <strong>me</strong> well enough</em>, he grumbled as he tried to turn over and get some more sleep. It was the weekend, after all.</p>
<p class="separator">~~~</p>
<p>Kaworu, on the other hand, had a very different morning. He got up early, made some tea, and resumed working on his final composition. He had been chipping away at this research project for the past six months now, and he was getting closer to finishing it so that he could finally get his masters. He was supposed to compose a piano four hands piece, à quatre mains, in the style of Beethoven. The composer had barely ever employed this form, which in Kaworu’s opinion, was a mistake — if one could say a genius like Beethoven had made a mistake.</p>
<p>In between writing down music notes in his composition notebook, drawing all the necessary treble and base clefs, measure lines, and accidentals, and trying out his composition on his Yamaha electric keyboard, with a full 88 keys, of course, he kept thinking back to last night.</p>
<p>“It’s really too bad that Shinji’s straight.” He sighed. “Or so he says…But no, I have to take his word for it — unlike a certain someone.” <em>I wish I could say I can’t believe Mari would do something like this…but really, it’s <strong>too</strong> in character.</em></p>
<p>He tried to focus on the task at hand, but this measure in particular was tricky. <em>Do I want the melody to build into a climax? Or just give a taste of what's to come?</em> he wondered. He decided that in order to figure this out, it was better to just perform the whole thing from he beginning.</p>
<p>He sat down more formally to play the piece, starting from page one — he had already composed 32 pages of sheet music, though it didn’t help that it was piano four hands: twice the grand staffs, and he could only fit three real “lines” of music on a page where he could normally fit six.</p>
<p>Kaworu settled into the familiar task of playing, performing — it was almost like breathing, after so many years of practicing. But even though he was trying to pay attention to the music, his thoughts kept going back to Shinji. <em>He’s so cute, he really is my type. I really hope I don’t have a crush on him already…that could make things awkward.</em> He missed a note, and while that could have made him frustrated, his stomach growled, and Tabris — his rescue cat, adopted from the local Humane Society — jumped up onto the keys and gave him a loud, “meOW.”</p>
<p>“Alright, alright,” he said with a laugh, petting his furry overlord. “Let’s make us some breakfast.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you so much everyone for all of the lovely comments and kudos! I appreciate every single one of them. :')</p>
<p>As for this chapter, I'm like so relieved that Kaworu is finally here so I can write cute, angsty scenes about them pining for each other lmao.</p>
<p>BTW, if anyone would be so generous as to beta for me, please reach out!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Confronting Mari</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Saturday afternoon, the day after Shinji's birthday: Shinji reluctantly gets out of bed to appease his growling stomach, and to confront Mari.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shinji still didn’t want to get out of bed, but it was almost 2pm now, and his stomach was growling so fiercely, it was starting to get annoying. As he was making his way to the kitchen on wobbly legs and feeling lightheaded, his phone buzzed. <em>It’s probably Mari</em>, he thought with a sigh as he looked at his phone screen: nope, an email from Tumblr about his now-defunct blog.</p>
<p>He had to laugh at least a little bit, if not only from anxiety. But then his phone buzzed again.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">how was last night? 😉</span>
</p>
<p>He groaned and shoved his phone back in his pocket. “What the fuck,” he murmured to himself, resolving to deal with this after he’d eaten something: he had too much of a low blood sugar headache to be able to form sentences with any less than 50% curse words.</p>
<p>Shinji made himself an instant ramen — he preferred to actually eat real food, but made an exception since he felt like he’d fall over any minute: either from a ~heart~ panic attack or his low blood sugar.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">why so silent? i see you read the last text</span>
</p>
<p><em>What the fuck? What gives her the right to do this?</em> he thought miserably as he munched on his noodles, trying to ignore his phone, pushing it until it was a full arm’s length from him. <em>This has to be some kind of discrimination or something, or at least sexual harassment, seriously! Ugh, I’ve got to ignore her, at least long enough to eat…</em> But then his phone buzzed again, and he peered over to see what she had to say <em>now</em>.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">what’s wrong, huh? did the Prince break your bed? 😘</span>
</p>
<p>He was certain that if he were in an American cartoon, steam would be coming out of his ears: he completely tossed the idea of eating first out of the window, and furiously typed something into his phone.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">wtf you seriously thought that you could make me gay by sending Kaworu last night???</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">uh-oh, Puppy Boy woke up on the wrong side of the dog bed!</span>
</p>
<p>Normally, Shinji found Mari’s weird nickname for him mildly annoying. But today, he was absolutely done with it.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">i’m being serious, mari! i told you. i’m straight</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">what’s wrong with being gay~</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">nothing!!! i’m just Not Gay.</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">well my gaydar’s never been wrong before, are you sure nothing happened last night?</span>
</p>
<p>He froze, his fingers just above the virtual keyboard of his phone, the image of those white eyelashes so close to his own face, opening to reveal red irises instantly coming to mind. <em>What should I do? Should I lie? If I told the truth, then  But what if she asks Kaworu…he said that they were childhood friends.</em></p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">what’s taking so long, puppy boy? are you hiding something?</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">you must have at least kissed~ and the Prince is a really good kisser</span>
</p>
<p><em>What the hell? But if i don’t say something she’ll just start making stuff up, won’t she,</em> Shinji thought as he resigned himself to lying. <em>It’s just a white lie, right? I mean, she told him to do that…and I didn’t consent. So it’s like sex isn’t sex if there isn’t consent, right?</em></p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">nothing happened!! at all. literally.</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">hmm, well, i was sure you two would have chemistry, nya~</span>
</p>
<p><em>Who the fuck cares what you think?</em> he thought, fingers tensing around his phone as he finally typed out what he set out to get in the first place from Mari.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">whatever</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">so, are you going to apologize or what?</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">okay, yeah sure!!!</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">sorry it didn’t work out with the Prince~ ❤️</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">it’s so weird, i think you’d totally make a good match</span>
</p>
<p>Shinji had to take a deep breath to avoid doing something he’d regret. <em>What a half-assed apology!</em></p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">what about for wasting my time and everyone’s money?</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">i dunno, it’s always a gamble, right?</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">like if rei can guess that you really wanted a dutch oven, why can’t i estimate that you and the Prince are really meant for each other?</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">the difference is that i actually wanted a dutch oven, and i told you, i’m not into dudes!!</span>
</p>
<p>Before he could get irritated further, Shinji completely shut off his phone and returned to his cheap noodles. But even the much-needed carbs couldn’t stop his thoughts from wandering: <em>Was it a good kiss?</em></p>
<p><em>But it wasn’t a kiss! But what's a word for a kiss that wasn’t consented to? Umm…Anyway, it was a non-kiss! But was it a good non-kiss…and why does Mari know that he’s a good kisser?</em> Shinji felt like he could feel his heart beating in his chest, and he didn’t think all the sodium from the ramen was helping. “Ugh, what am I supposed to do?” he asked the bowl of now somewhat bloated, soggy cheap noodles. Unfortunately, they didn’t feel like helping out either.</p>
<p>Shinji checked the time on his phone: 2:17pm. <em>I guess I’m in for another long weekend of anxiety…</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I just actively felt Bad for Shinji through writing this whole thing. I'm so sorry for putting you through this, Shinji! (I originally had Mari being completely unapologetic, but decided to scrap that because it felt really way too much, and it's not like I have anything against Mari. But I dunno, he's still going to be so worried! I get anxiety just thinking about all this drama myself, lol.)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Actually Anxious Ikari Shinji</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Monday, June 9, 2026: Shinji decides that he needs rip off the bandaid, so to speak, and tell his coworkers about what happened -- or, well, what didn't happen -- on Friday. He's extremely unexcited for this task.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shinji arrived at work at 9:34, later than usual. He’d been dragging his feet to go to work — not wanting to face anyone. He walked by Rei’s cubicle, hoping to just see a familiar face, but the usually punctual young woman was not there. He went to his own cubicle, and immediately pulled out his own phone and texted her.</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">rei are you okay? i just saw you weren’t at work</span>
</p><p>Rei had problems with her weakened immune system — some kind of genetic anomaly — ever since they were kids, and often missed school and work due to being bedridden completely by a simple cold, or in the hospital by a mere case of strep throat, but Shinji felt even more depressed about the situation now that he was completely alone.</p><p class="separator">~~~</p><p>Shinji had only been able to go fifteen minutes before he just couldn’t sit still and focus any longer. <em>It’s probably the looming sense of doom, but maybe I just need some more coffee?</em> he thought. <em>At least I can do something about a lack of coffee. Isn’t that what Dr. Akagi is always telling me? To focus on the things that I can actually control? Ha…</em></p><p>As he approached the break room, he heard two voices — decidedly male — talking loudly. Shinji's probable need for coffee suddenly took a backseat to his crippling social anxiety, adrenaline pumping in his veins as he prepared to run away from one of the most terrifying situations he could find himself in right now: face-to-face with any of the coworkers who bought him his “birthday date.”</p><p>He stopped just outside the door, as one man said, “Huh, I wonder where Shinji is? I hope he had fun this weekend.” It was definitely Kensuke.</p><p>“He probably thinks he's too good for us now that he’s finally done it, haha!” the other man, Touji, joked. “He’s such a nervous wreck, though, sometimes I worry about the guy.”</p><p><em>Ahh yes, just what I want to hear myself be called by my coworkers,</em> Shinji mused.</p><p>“He seems nice though.”</p><p>Shinji heard the other door to the coffee room open. “Hey, you two! There you are.” It was Hikari. “We’re supposed to be in a meeting <em>right now,</em> stop gossiping and come with me!”</p><p>“But—“ Touji started to protest.</p><p>“Now,” Hikari repeated, as Shinji heard the shuffling of feet and the closing of the break room door. He counted to five, and then entered the break room, which was blissfully empty. Shinji’s head, however, felt burdensomely full as he began to start the pot.</p><p class="separator">~~~</p><p><em>I can’t avoid them for forever,</em> Shinji argued with himself as he slowly made his way to his coworkers’ usual lunch spot. <em>Back there at the break room, that was a really close call…if they hadn’t been so loud, I would’ve just walked right into an interrogation about my Friday night, basically!</em> He was sure that if he tried to eat at his cubicle, Hikari would try to come find him, so his only other option (in the interest of minimizing social contact) was to hide in the bathroom and eat his meal there, as if he were in middle school. Instead of facing any one of them alone, he decided to rip the entire bandaid off at once.</p><p>“Well, look who’s coming our way!” Touji loudly proclaimed with a laugh. “Here’s the man of the hour!”</p><p>“Hi, umm, guys,” Shinji said shyly.</p><p>“How was the date?” Kensuke asked eagerly.</p><p>Shinji noticed that Mari, though wearing her signature smirk, was quite uncharacteristically not saying anything.</p><p>“Well, stupid Shinji, did you finally pop your stupid cherry?” Asuka deadpanned.</p><p>“Are you okay, Shinji?” Hikari asked, though only after giving Asuka death glare, which the other woman ignored. “You look like you’re ill.”</p><p>Shinji certainly felt sick. He felt like his cheeks are on fire as he finally spoke: “Well, um, no, nothing happened.”</p><p>“I knew you'd still be a dumb virgin, even after we’d bought you a literal prostitute,” Asuka rudely commented.</p><p>“Asuka, that’s completely inappropriate,” Hikari told her, then turned to Shinji. “It’s okay, Shinji! I just hope that you’ve been safe and had a fun birthday otherwise,” she said, trying to smooth things over.</p><p>“Well, what about our freakin money?” Touji reminded his partner. “Remember, Hikari, we just bought a fucking house.”</p><p>Hikari went white as a sheet as she recalled the existence of their mortgage and all the payments. “Wait a second,” Hikari said, turning to Mari. “I thought you said this was foolproof. And, it didn’t <em>seem</em> like you got us much of a discount.”</p><p>“What happened that night, Shinji?” Kensuke pressed, wanting some details. “Was your date at least hot? I would’ve thought she would be, for the price!”</p><p>“W-well, umm,” Shinji started to say, head spinning at all of the animosity and tension. “I-it was…a guy.”</p><p>Mari suddenly burst out laughing, though no one else was seemed to find anything particularly hilarious.</p><p>Touji in particular was unamused, and he looked just about ready to punch Mari. “What the fuck?!”</p><p>“What the hell did you do with our money?” Hikari added, uncharacteristically cussing.</p><p>“Sorry everyone,” Mari said, “it turned out that there were no female escorts available that night.”</p><p>Hikari no longer could disguise her frustration. “And you’re telling us <em>now</em>?!”</p><p>“Then who the hell did you send?” Touji added.</p><p>“Well, there’s a certain person at that escort agency that I know, who would be a really great fit for Puppy Boy here, so I thought that I’d just go with him.”</p><p>Asuka turned to the brunette woman sharply. “You didn’t send that <em>perv</em> to stupid Shinji’s place, did you?”</p><p>“Princess, what makes you think the Prince is a pervert?” Mari asked, trying to evade her question.</p><p>“Ugh, I can’t believe you, Four-Eyes!” Asuka exclaimed as she abruptly stood up and stormed off.</p><p>“Wait, Princess!” Mari called as she got up to run after her, leaving Shinji awkwardly standing and Touji, Hikari, and Kensuke, mouths open, staring in their direction.</p><p>Hikari sighed, finally breaking the silence. “I told you we shouldn’t have trusted Mari,” she muttered to Touji.</p><p>“Hey! Is it my fault that <em>you</em> didn’t want to spend too much money?” Touji fired back.</p><p>“Wait, but Touji, like saving money is important…you guys just bought a house,” Kensuke tried to reason with him.</p><p>“Stay out of this!” Touji and Hikari yelled.</p><p>Shinji finally turned and ran, not wanting to bear witness to any more of this.</p><p>“Wait, Shinji!” Hikari called, but Shinji ignored her.</p><p class="separator">~~~</p><p>Shinji ended up in a stall of the men’s bathroom. <em>Maybe I should’ve just chosen this route in the first place,</em> his depression self chided him for trying to face his fears. He was just about to open his lunch bag and begin his first, humiliating bathroom lunch since his public high school days when someone started banging loudly on the bathroom door.</p><p>“Shinji! Are you in there?” Hikari’s voice, though muffled, came through. “Please come out!”</p><p>He shrank on his seat on the porcelain throne, covering his ears as she continued banging on the door.</p><p>“Hikari,” Shinji heard a male voice say — he recognized it as Touji’s. “Come on, I’m sorry. Let’s just finish lunch..”</p><p>“But we can’t just leave him here—”</p><p>“Whatever, okay? He’s probably not even in there, you’re probably just disturbing some poor shmuck trying to use the urinal.”</p><p>“But—” Hikari tried go protest, her voice somewhat fainter.</p><p>“C’mon,” Touji said, as their footsteps got faded away, until he could no longer hear them.</p><p>Shinji sighed and got up and exited the stall. He threw his lunch into the bathroom trash can since his stomach churned at the thought of any food entering, and slowly, cautiously peeked his head out of the bathroom door. No one was in sight, thankfully.</p><p><em>Ugh, well that was a disaster,</em> he thought as he sat down at his cubicle, wondering how he would endure the next five hours.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>If I felt bad while writing the last chapter, I felt like crap after writing this chapter, lol. But there will be more cute Kawoshin scenes soon, I promise!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Shinji Needs Way More Therapy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Thursday, June 12, 2026: Shinji is still reeling from Monday -- and last Friday's 'date' -- when he takes his weekly trip to Dr. Akagi's office. The doctor's orders are to hang out with a certain someone whose initials are KN (or NK), but later, he gets a surprise text from someone else (whom he will actually admit to himself that) he's been wanting to hear from.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shinji sat in the waiting room of Dr. Akagi’s clinic. He couldn’t hear anything but badly chosen classical music (<em>I really should give them some pointers sometime…why would they play Moonlight Sonata? It’s too depressing…</em>) and the white noise machines the two women used to keep their conversations private.</p>
<p>“Shinji, come on in! Sorry to keep you waiting.” Dr. Akagi had suddenly appeared.</p>
<p>Shinji followed her back to her office.</p>
<p>“So, happy birthday!” Dr. Akagi adjusted in her seat, trying to find a comfortable way to sit and hold her clipboard and pen.</p>
<p>“Umm, thanks, aha.” Shinji kept his eyes glued on the floor. <em>Why did I even come this week?</em></p>
<p>“Shinji, are you okay? I know that last Friday was supposed to be a…major day, for you.”</p>
<p>Shinji stopped examining his footwear, and instead looked out the window. There was a pizza shop across the street, and he could see the shopkeeper cleaning the window of the quaint parlor. <em>Come on, stay in the present…</em> But his thoughts betrayed him, and with hardly any prompting at all, he could practically replay every move Kaworu’s lips had made against his own, and then his hand on his <em>ass</em>…! <em>Enough,</em> he scolded himself, trying to think of Not Weird Things. But then his thoughts returned to his disastrous Monday instead…</p>
<p>“Shinji, I can’t help you unless you tell me what is going on. I suspect that the…date didn’t go as planned? Please communicate with me, please?”</p>
<p>Shinji felt a little sorry for being so intractable, when Dr. Akagi was just trying to help his sorry self. <em>Not to mention how fucked up it was,</em> his brain added. So he at least nodded. “Yeah. Not good.” He shifted his eyes back to the floor, now studying the whorls and lines in the hardwood flooring. <em>Though that’s not entirely right, I mean, Kaworu seems like a really nice guy! But Monday was…disastrous.</em></p>
<p>“I’m so sorry, I know that this is a sensitive topic.” Though he wasn’t looking, Shinji sensed that Dr. Akagi was trying to come up with something to say and do.</p>
<p>“Virginity really is a social construct,” Shinji mumbled, surprising himself. He was still staring at the floor. “Things did not go over w-w-well w-with m-my friends, on M-Monday, w-when they found out…”</p>
<p>Dr. Akagi wrote something on her clipboard. “Are you okay, Shinji? Are you safe? Do you have any supports?”</p>
<p>He took a deep breath. “Well, my childhood friend is probably in the hospital, since she’s immunocompromised and gets super sick super bad a lot, and she i-isn’t answering her texts. Everyone at work got r-r-really m-mad, umm, when I told them. So I’ve been avoiding everyone, except for necessary meetings.” Shinji finally looked up at Dr. Akagi, though not entirely meeting her eyes.</p>
<p>She pursed her lips. “Is there anyone else that you can turn to?”</p>
<p><em>Well, maybe…</em> “Umm, I somehow managed to make a new friend, though, this weekend.”</p>
<p>Dr. Akagi’s whole demeanor changed. “Really? That’s wonderful, Shinji!” She scribbled something down excitedly.</p>
<p><em>Ha, well I’m not going to tell you how I really met him, just yet…</em> “Yeah, his name’s Kaworu, and he likes playing the piano. He suggested that we duet sometime. He’s a masters student at some music school around here.”</p>
<p>“That should be good for you, Shinji!” Dr. Akagi practically glowed at the knowledge that her client was branching out and meeting new people. “It would be great for you to have friendships concerning your other interests.”</p>
<p><em>Yep, because I’m practically a basket case when it comes to having friends.</em> “Yeah, he seems pretty cool! It’s been a while…since I’ve made a new friend outside of school or work.” <em>Maybe since like…never…though Kaworu is certainly not an ordinary person.</em></p>
<p>“How lovely! You should ask to meet up, sometime, preferably soon,” she encouraged him. “It might help to take your mind off of the other stuff?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, it would be nice to hang out with someone who did not invest in m-my…b-birthday present.” <em>Warm, soft lips on mine…Well, maybe not all of the stuff. Wait, b-but how am I just supposed to text him?! I never text anyone, except for Rei, and I’ve known her for years!</em></p>
<p>His apprehension must have shown on his face — or maybe Dr. Akagi was a mind reader. “Shinji, I think it should be your ‘homework’ for next time to ask Kaworu to hang out sometime soon: either this week — preferably — or next week. I will text you to remind you to ask him about it tomorrow night, to keep you accountable!” she told him, practically reading his mind.</p>
<p>“O-oh, it’s o-okay, I-I think I actually will t-text him…” Shinji trailed off. <em>Or I might just curl up into a ball and hope that no one who actually cares about me discovers my body, dead in my apartment. That would be so cruel of me, to do that to someone! And in all likelihood, the only person that would be there is Rei…that would devastate her!!!</em></p>
<p>“Shinji, I’m still going to text you.” Dr. Akagi smiled, an expression that read as, “I know you’re not going to text him and I’m calling you out on it.”</p>
<p>Shinji sighed. <em>Well, she’s not wrong to be suspicious.</em> “You look like a little shit, you know,” he mumbled.</p>
<p>“Well, if so, I’m a little shit who’s probably right: you need an accountability buddy.” She laughed.</p>
<p>Shinji slouched against the couch in defeat. “I-I guess this is why I pay you.” Dr. Akagi laughed again, at that.</p>
<p class="separator">~~~</p>
<p>Shinji was back in his apartment, cooking dinner and attempting to compose his text to Kaworu in his head. <em>I really hope Kaworu texts me first. There’s no way I’ll be able to text him…</em> Shinji doubted that his social anxiety would survive his attempt to craft the perfect text to send. <em>Should I write, “Hi, it’s Shinji!” or “Hey, how are you? :)” or…god, this is hopeless. <strong>I</strong> am hopeless…</em></p>
<p>His phone buzzed, which was a truly rare occurrence for him, and was immediately disappointed when he didn’t see Kaworu’s name on the little notification bubble. <em>He probably hates me anyway,</em> his brain concluded unhelpfully. However, once he finally read the name…</p>
<p>“Oh, it’s Ayanami!” Shinji couldn’t help but smile as he unlocked his phone, glad that she was at least well enough to text.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Rei: </span>
  <span class="text">Hello, Ikari! Thank you for checking on me — I’ve been in the hospital unfortunately since Saturday and had not been well enough until now to get discharged. I didn’t have a phone charger with me, so I have been unable to text you back until now. Apologies for any undue stress this has caused you.</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">Oh my god, Ayanami! Hope you’re feeling better!</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Rei: </span>
  <span class="text">Yes, I am. Thank you! I am still a bit on the mend, but I will be fine.</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">I’ve missed you a lot, Ayanami! And there was a lot you missed at work, aha…</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Rei: </span>
  <span class="text">I have missed you too — long hospital stays are way too lonely.</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Rei: </span>
  <span class="text">And I am sure much has happened, since it was your birthday last Friday…</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">Do you want to come over for dinner, so we can catch up and I can make you something using this amazing new dutch oven you got me?</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Rei: </span>
  <span class="text">That sounds lovely, I look forward to it!</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">Does 6:30 tomorrow sound okay?</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Rei: </span>
  <span class="text">Great! 🙂</span>
</p>
<p>Shinji put down his phone finally, already starting to plan what they would have tomorrow. <em>Vegetarian pasta sauce, some of that angel hair pasta I have sitting around, and…I’ve always wanted to try baking bread using a dutch oven! Yeah, that would be perfect…</em> It would be good to have a friend over, for something normal-ish.</p>
<p><em>Unlike last time someone was here…I was so awkward, no wonder Kaworu hasn’t texted me at all since.</em> The worry wormed its way in before Shinji could squash it with a mental flyswatter. <em>He was probably lying about finding me cute…not that I care, of course!</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>It felt weird to not post 3-4 chapters every day for the past few days! But lol, I am still here. (And I am rapidly running out of pre-written chapters!! Oh well, I mostly did the posting it on the day it happens thing to build up for Shinji's birthday.)</p>
<p>Side note PSA: Don't hide things from your therapist lol, I Do Not Approve of Shinji's behavior in that regard. (of course, baby steps are necessary. and i've been totally guilty of this in the past lmao.) But, I do recommend finding a therapist who Calls You Out On Your Shit, nicely of course.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. "Hostess with the Mostest" Ikari Shinji</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Friday, June 13, 2026: Shinji plays host for a nice evening dinner with Rei, talking about his disastrous birthday, why Mari is kinda being offensive (or being really offensive, lol), and Rei’s recovery. And, would Shinji be Shinji if he weren’t avoiding something? But sometimes he doesn't end up running away...!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shinji was busy cleaning off the kitchen island’s counters when the doorbell rang.</p><p>“Coming!” He finished drying off, peeked in the oven, made sure he had set his kitchen table with all the necessary plates and silverware, and finally went to answer the door.</p><p>“Hi, Ayanami! Come in,” he said, as he opened the door.</p><p>“Thank you, Ikari.” He noticed that she was looking even paler than usual, and there were dark circles under her eyes. “It smells lovely in here, what are you cooking?”</p><p>“I’m baking some bread in the oven, and I’ve got some homemade vegetarian pasta sauce simmering in one pot.” He smiled inwardly, remembering how long it was until he had actually noticed that she was vegetarian — or rather, Rei just didn’t like meat — and had made a point since. “I was just about to start boiling some water for the pasta when you arrived.”</p><p>“That sounds great,” Rei said, silently pleased. “I have unfortunately not had much energy to cook for myself since I arrived home yesterday.”</p><p>Shinji frowned. “Wait, what kind of host am I? Please, sit down!” He pulled out a chair for her and made sure she was securely seated before moving to get drinks. “What would you like?”</p><p>“Just water, for me, thank you.” He handed her a glass filled with water from his Brita pitcher, and began another pot boiling on the stovetop.</p><p>“Sorry, dinner should be ready in like 5 minutes now.”</p><p>“No, this is quite pleasant, actually. It's good to just…hang out, not at work or being in the hospital, or alone in my apartment. This is…peaceful.”</p><p>Shinji was sweating from all the flurry of activity, but he really enjoyed cooking: it was a kind of tranquility, at least for him. “I’m glad! I never know what to do, to entertain guests.” The oven timer went off, and he took out the bread to let it sit and cool, and turned to the boiling pot of water and pasta.</p><p>Rei observed him, and took a look around his apartment. “It’s been a while since I’ve been here, actually.”</p><p>“Yeah, I’ve been…busy.” Shinji took the pot of pasta off the heat, and poured out the noodles into a strainer. <em>Well, busy with my depression.</em> “I’m just about done, now, Ayanami — why don’t you go sit at the kitchen table? I’ll be right there.”</p><p>She hopped off the bar stool and brought her glass over. “This table is new,” she commented as he brought over a steaming serving plate of pasta, and a basket of sliced bread.</p><p>“Yeah, I found it on one of those weird apps? Like [[LET GO, but not let go]] or something? It was only about $20.”</p><p>“It’s nice,” she said simply, breathing in the smell of the still-simmering pasta sauce.</p><p>He gingerly stuck a ladle into sauce bowl. “Careful, it’s hot.”</p><p>“I am sure I will be fine,” she said, a slight fierceness in her eyes as she served herself. He really didn’t know what to make of her sometimes. Though she looked delicate, especially because of all the illness she went through, she still managed to undertake whatever was asked of her.</p><p><em>I’m sure I’m being ableist or something,</em> he scolded himself. “Well, how is it?” he asked as she took the first bite.</p><p>“It is really hot, but…it has been a long time since I have had a home-cooked meal. It’s delicious, thank you, Ikari.”</p><p>He blushed in embarrassment. “It’s really nothing! I found the recipe on the internet, you know.”</p><p>“Still! And this bread is wonderful,” she complimented him after swallowing her mouthful. “Come on, Ikari, eat up!”</p><p>He looked down at his plate to find, to his amazement, that it was still empty, and his stomach nearly rumbled. “Okay, okay!”</p><p class="separator">~~~</p><p>Once they had finished dinner, Shinji followed up with a dessert of an assortment of mochi he’d bought at the local Japanese supermarket and fresh fruit.</p><p>“So, Ikari,” Rei said between bites of mango slices, “How did you birthday go?”</p><p>He was sure that at that moment, he was paler than either Rei or Kaworu. “Well, ummm…” He sighed. “Not well.”</p><p>“What happened?” she asked him.</p><p>He told her about how though he’d told Mari he was straight, Mari sent a male escort to his apartment that Friday — though he left out the kissing part. “And, so we got to talking, and now we’re maybe friends? But then I got into a huge fight with Mari and everyone on Monday, because of course they wanted to know how it went.”</p><p>“Hmm.” Rei seemed to consider this. “Well, Kaworu sounds nice enough — even though he’s friends with Mari. That’s so awful, what she did.”</p><p>“Yeah, it would be weird, except he just seemed to feel so genuinely bad about the whole thing,” Shinji admitted. “I just like, don’t know <em>why</em> Mari would do something like this. She seems convinced that I’m gay?”</p><p>Rei nodded. “Yes, she appears fixated on that. But there’s a difference between having gaydar and crossing someone’s boundaries like this.”</p><p>Shinji slumped against his seat. “Ugh, yeah, I know! I just…don’t really know if I’m gay. Just because I don’t have any evidence to the contrary, doesn’t mean that I’m not gay?” He paused, trying to parse out all the double negatives. “Or it doesn’t mean that I’m not not gay? Ugh!” He had to laugh, everything — including his sentence — was kind of absurd.</p><p>“Hmm.” Rei took a piece of mochi, and chewed it thoughtfully. “Well, I began to identify as asexual sometime during high school, right?”</p><p>Shinji nodded. “I think it was like 10th grade?” <em>Wow, that was so long ago.</em></p><p>“Hmm, or maybe 11th. Either way, is that not a complete absence of sexual desire for anyone?” she mused aloud. “So many people say that asexuals ‘just have not met the right person’ or are ‘repressed’ or whatnot—”</p><p>“Oh, gosh, Rei, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—“</p><p>“It’s okay, I know you did not. But I am just saying that sometimes, you just know, despite the complete lack of any evidence.” She took another mochi.</p><p>“Hmm…I never thought about it like that,” he admitted. “That’s actually really insightful, Ayanami.”</p><p>“Sometimes, I do say things that matter,” she deadpanned, but gave him a genuine smile. “It seems like Mari believes that you claim to be asexual towards men, and that you have not met the right one, or that you are repressing some feelings.”</p><p><em>But what if she’s right?</em> A tiny voice whispered in his head.</p><p>“Regardless, what she did was completely inappropriate, no matter who you have met or which feelings you have repressed,” she concluded, as if reading his mind.</p><p>“Thank you, really, Ayanami!” He sighed a little bit, then straightened up. “It’s been a really long week…for the both of us. Do you want a hug?”</p><p>“As long as your hands are clean,” she said, with a smile that told him she was joking but not joking. After slathering on some hand sanitizer just in case (with some tips from Rei about how to actually use it effectively and let it dry completely), she gave him a big bear hug.</p><p class="separator">~~~</p><p>It was only a little bit after 8pm when Rei left, since she was still pretty tired from her long hospital stay, though Shinji made sure she didn’t leave empty-handed: several containers of pasta, pasta sauce, and fresh-baked bread all accompanied her on her trip home. He was still doing the dishes when his phone buzzed. He looked over at the screen, and blanched a bit when he saw the text.</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Dr. Akagi: </span>
  <span class="text">Hi, Shinji! Happy Friday. I just wanted to make sure you followed through with your homework!</span>
</p><p><em>Crap, she remembered to text me!</em> Shinji had kinda sorta been counting on her forgetting all about texting him, since that’s how he usually got through life: whenever someone was supposed to hold him accountable, they usually fell through.</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">Hi Dr. Akagi. Sorry, I’ve been busy, so I still haven’t gotten around to it.</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Dr. Akagi: </span>
  <span class="text">Well okay, but you really should text him. Hope you have a good weekend.</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">Thanks, you too!</span>
</p><p>Shinji sighed, going back to the dishwashing. <em>Shit shit shit, why did I even tell her about all this</em>, he wondered to himself as he finished up the last utensils and pans and began to dry and put away the dishes. <em>But…I think I’ll be in even deeper shit if she catches me in a lie next Thursday.</em></p><p>Once everything was all cleaned up — counters once again spotless, kitchen table cleared, and not a stray dish or utensil in sight — Shinji actually felt pretty accomplished. Then he turned to his phone, in the spot where it was sitting the island.</p><p><em>Well, here goes nothing.</em> He started typing in the keyboard, not really stopping to think, and hit send immediately.</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">hi, Kaworu! Hope you had a good week. Iwas wondering if you wanna han gout sometime, like soon!just lmk</span>
</p><p><em>Oh god, oh god, what have I done, I look like an idiot</em>, he thought as he started panicking about the typos. He flopped on the couch and opened up one of the addictive phone games he hated but still played, something about clearing squares by hitting them with lots of little balls, to try to distract himself.</p><p>He had only just finished the level when he got another message.</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">Hi Shinji! Thanks, you too 🙂</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">And definitely! Are you free tomorrow evening, like after 8, to come over to my place?</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">Yes, sounds great! I’ll see you then 🙂</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">I’ll text you my address tomorrow. See you soon!</span>
</p><p>After reading the last text, he flopped back down into the couch with a sigh of relief. <em>Wow, he really, actually responded!</em> he thought as he returned to his phone game. <em>…Shit, when was the last time I’ve been to someone’s house — who wasn’t Rei?</em></p><p><em>You’ll probably be fine!</em> one part of his mind told him.</p><p><em>You’ll probably fuck up majorly,</em> another part said.</p><p>“I’m going to bed,” he announced to the room, as if to tell both of those parts of his mind to <em>fuck off</em>.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Almost didn't get this up today because I've had like a very weird 24 hours involving health scares, people being angry at me on Etsy for no reason, etc. But glad I did get around to posting this!</p><p>Also one of my (many) headcanons is that Shinji would make a great -- if nervous -- host of a get-together. This is the last chapter (in the continuity) that I have pre-written, so please be patient with me if the next chapter isn't up for like a week or more. (Unless I get extremely inspired and decide to write the next chapter super quickly, lol.)</p><p>(Don't worry though, I am definitely planning on continuing!! I think there are at least...20 more chapters to go lmao.)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Tabris the Furry Overlord</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Saturday, June 14, 2026: Shinji hangs out with Kaworu at his apartment, err, well, Tabris' apartment, that is.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shinji was stuck: not physically, but mentally and emotionally. <em>Do I ring the doorbell or knock on the door?</em> he wondered as he held a still-warm tinfoil-wrapped loaf of bread in his arms like it was his baby. He shifted the “baby” to one arm and took out his phone to check the time: 8:05pm.</p>
<p><em>If I wait any longer, I’ll be late, won’t I?</em> He sighed, and decided to ring the doorbell — his arms were full anyway.</p>
<p>Above the thumping of his own heart, he could hear footsteps quickly approaching. The door suddenly opened.</p>
<p>“Hi, Shinji!” Kaworu stood behind the door, smiling and eyes going wide at the tinfoil baby in Shinji’s hands. “Wow, that smells so good!”</p>
<p>“Hi, Kaworu,” Shinji said, looking up, slightly embarrassed, at Kaworu. <em>I never realized he was a little taller than me, huh…wait I need to give him the bread…!</em> “Umm, this is for you!” He held out the tinfoil-wrapped loaf to the other man. “Uhh, it’s bread — I baked it m-myself,” he said self-consciously. <em>I really hope this loaf turned out okay…otherwise I will just have to crawl into a hole!</em></p>
<p>Kaworu took the loaf and looked at Shinji in awe, which made Shinji even more self-conscious. “You must be a very talented baker, Shinji! Thank you so much, and come in.” He opened the door wider for Shinji.</p>
<p>Shinji entered Kaworu’s studio apartment and took off his shoes. It was a lot smaller than Shinji’s own apartment, and didn’t have much in the way of furniture besides a futon (couch) and a futon (bed), and an electric keyboard and a piano bench. It was slightly messy — bed hastily made up, some papers strewn here and there, but since it was so bare — and tiny — it didn’t quite irk Shinji as much as it might have otherwise.</p>
<p>“Sorry, I’ve been composing all day — otherwise I would have made the place a little neater,” Kaworu told Shinji from his kitchen, where he was putting away the loaf carefully.</p>
<p>“No, no, not at all! It’s…cosy, it feels lived-in.” Shinji shifted from foot to foot, not sure if it was okay to sit down anywhere.</p>
<p>“You can take a seat on the couch,” Kaworu said.</p>
<p>“O-okay, thanks!” Shinji only had to take four steps to reach said couch and began to sit down.</p>
<p>“Well, I have to warn you—“</p>
<p>“Meow!” An inky furball suddenly jumped up onto Shinji’s lap out of nowhere.</p>
<p>“Ah!” he yelped out of surprise, as the cat began to rub up against Shinji’s face.</p>
<p>The cat suddenly levitated, revealing that Kaworu was now holding the black cat. “Oops, sorry about that,” he said sheepishly, putting the cat down on the floor again before sitting down next to Shinji on the couch. “I forgot to ask if you were allergic to cats!”</p>
<p>“No, no, it’s okay! I like cats actually.” Shinji laughed, wiping some of the fur off of his face. “Though I am maybe allergic to getting surprised. What’s its name?” <em>God, that was a such a lame joke. Now Kaworu is really going to know I’m an idiot…</em></p>
<p>Kaworu chuckled, to Shinji’s relief. “His name’s Tabris, after the angel of free will,” he explained as the cat jumped up into his owner’s lap. “And apparently Tabris’ will is to get some pets right now.” He scratched behind the cat’s ears as Tabris began to purr.</p>
<p>“He’s a beautiful cat.”</p>
<p>“We’re quite complementary, aren’t we?”</p>
<p><em>Well they are both attractive — wait um!!!</em> Shinji could feel himself getting red in the cheeks.</p>
<p>“Tabris is all black with green eyes, and I’m basically all white with red eyes.” Kaworu looked at Shinji as if that would explain everything, and then continued, “and black and white are opposites, and green and red are opposite colors on the color wheel.”</p>
<p>Shinji was now feeling very, very silly. “Oh, haha, that’s funny!” <em>Oh god, I am a mess. Like, Kaworu is just objectively attractive, right? This has nothing to do with me finding him attractive…right?</em></p>
<p>“Yep, when I was looking to adopt, someone at the shelter pointed that out, and I just had to bring him home with me. Didn’t I, Tabbie?” He started making little cooing sounds at the feline, before giving Tabris one final pet and putting him back on the floor once more. He grabbed a laptop out from under the couch. “Do you want to play a horror game?”</p>
<p><em>Oh right…that is what we said we’d do.</em> “Yeah, sure!”</p>
<p>“Do you have any in mind?” Kaworu pulled up a search bar in the web browser.</p>
<p>Shinji’s entire mind went blank. “Umm, I have no idea actually.” <em>I really should have looked some up before. Now I look like a fake fan!</em></p>
<p>“That’s fine, let’s start with a classic. Have you ever heard of Slenderman?”</p>
<p>“O-of course! Though I was too scared to ever play…”</p>
<p>“It’d be my honor to introduce you to Slender: The 8 Pages,” Kaworu said, chuckling, as he pulled the game up. “Luckily, I already have it installed on my computer.”
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>It's funny to think about Kaworu being super enamored with his cat, since the manga....(well not so much as funny as...i don't even know what to call this). Needless to say, this is Kaworu has very little of Karl in him lmao.</p>
<p>Next chapter will be up sometime in the next day or so! :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Kaworu and Shinji Play a(n Indie Horror) Game</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Later on that Saturday night, Shinji gets the pants scared off him (though not literally) while Kaworu is distracted from playing Slender by how cute Shinji is.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>btw this is part 2/2 of Saturday, June 14, 2026!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kaworu had turned off the lights in order to give Shinji the “full experience.” He also got out a headphone splitter, so that they could both listen to the game audio directly: panting breaths, eerie music, wind through the trees, footsteps, all designed to ramp up your flight or fight response.</p><p>Kaworu had already died three times, and after taking a break to look at memes on Facebook with Shinji, he was now on his fourth try at collecting all 8 pages. “It’s been a while since I’ve tried playing.” Kaworu had two of the pages in the first two minutes, but it had been maybe three minutes or so and he hadn’t been able to find the third.</p><p>“I-it’s okay,” Shinji said, eyes focused on the screen, watching Kaworu navigate a creepy, rundown bathroom. Kaworu could practically feel how tense the other man was sitting next to him, even on this fourth play through. <em>Well, he did mostly close his eyes for the first one…</em></p><p>“Ah, got it, finally!” Kaworu found the third page in this awful bathroom, but when he turned the corner, Slenderman was standing there blocking the hallway.</p><p>Shinji practically jumped out of his skin. “Ahh! Watch out!!” he yelled, grabbing onto Kaworu’s arm as static filled the screen and loud pulsating sounds filled both their ears.</p><p>But somehow, when the static cleared, Kaworu was back outside the almost certainly cursed bathroom, and not in the clutches of Slenderman. “You okay?” Kaworu looked at Shinji, and blushed when he noticed Shinji clinging to him. <em>Why does he have to be so cute?!</em></p><p>Shinji looked up at him (<em>He is actually adorable!!</em>), looked down at his hands that were still holding Kaworu’s arm, and then back up at Kaworu, cheeks completely red. “Oh my god!” He let go of Kaworu’s arm and tried to scoot back an inch on the sofa. “I’m so sorry, oh my god I screamed didn’t I, I didn’t mean—“</p><p>“It’s okay, it’s actually a lot more fun playing this with other people.” Kaworu laughed. “And I definitely jumped too when he appeared.”</p><p>“Really? You seem pretty okay with this.” Shinji tucked his knees up against his chest. “I feel like I’m just a big…scaredy cat.”</p><p>“I’m also scared,” Kaworu admitted, “though I think I maybe express it in a different way than you do.” <em>I’m also somewhat distracted by a certain someone who isn’t Slenderman, who’s right next to me…</em></p><p>Five minutes later, Kaworu was still managing to survive — and also had found the third and also fourth page — but now he was stuck running around the forest, which was filled with nearly identical trees. In short, he was lost.</p><p>“Oh god, I can’t watch anymore.” Shinji buried his face in his hands and turned directly into Kaworu’s shoulder, making Kaworu jump a little at the contact — both of their nerves were running high. “Just let me know when it’s over!” Shinji’s voice, slightly muffled, said.</p><p>“I can stop playing if it’s too much,” Kaworu said, looking down at the other boy and fighting the heat rising in his cheeks. <em>Though he is really cute like this…but it would seem too mean to continue if he doesn’t want to.</em></p><p>“N-no, I’ll be fine,” Shinji muttered into his fingers.</p><p>“Okay then.” Kaworu tried to focus back on the game, and took a few more turns before he came face to face with Slenderman, the screen filling with static and loud distorted noises blasting through the headphones. “Well, I died — again.”</p><p>Shinji seemed to register this, and slowly took his head out of his hands, and found out that he had ended right up against Kaworu again. “Ahh! Sorry,” he said, backing up.</p><p>“Haha, it’s okay — as long as you were having some fun,” Kaworu said, getting up to turn on the lights.</p><p>“It’s weird, I was super scared, but…now I just feel kind of lighter, I guess? It was fun, aha.”</p><p>“Horror as a genre can be quite cathartic.” Kaworu sat back down on the couch. “Have you been stressed lately?”</p><p>Kaworu watched as the other man bit his lip nervously.</p><p>“You don’t have to answer, sorry if that was too forward of me—“</p><p>“No, it’s okay! It’s just, like…there’s been a lot of shit going on at work, with the whole, umm, Mari thing, and my friend just got out of the hospital—“</p><p>“Oh my god, are they okay?”</p><p>“Yeah, she’ll be fine…she’s always had health issues.” Shinji slumped against the couch, before suddenly sitting up. “Sorry, I’m probably oversharing—“</p><p>“It’s completely okay, I’m the one who asked after all, Shinji,” Kaworu told him, taking Shinji’s hand in his own and giving it a gentle squeeze before letting go again. “I want to be here for you.” <em>God, what am I doing to myself? He told me he’s straight…</em></p><p>“Thanks, Kaworu,” Shinji said, a small smile on his lips that quickly melted into concern. “Wait, umm, I also want to be here for you too! Are you doing, umm, okay?”</p><p>Kaworu hoped that his pale skin would mask any blush that was on his cheeks. “I’m doing fine,” he said, chuckling nervously. <em>I guess, if you don’t count that I might be short on rent for this month, I have a mega crush on a straight boy, and I also have a masters degree I’m working on…</em> “Well, I have been working on a composition actually for my masters, and I’ve gotten a bit stuck.”</p><p>Shinji’s eyes seemed to light up. “Oh, wow, that’s really cool — well not the part where you’re stuck, but is that all of the papers over there?”</p><p>Kaworu chuckled. “Yes, it is. Excuse the mess, please, I’ve been basically working on it nonstop all day.”</p><p>“Oh, what mess? I-I didn’t notice anything!”</p><p>Kaworu laughed again, though he highly suspected Shinji was lying: he’d seen that neat as <em>fuck</em> apartment of his. “Speaking of which,” he said, standing up to stretch and yawn a little, “I don’t know about you, but I’ve been up since 4am.”</p><p>Shinji immediately got off the couch. “What?! Kaworu, you should go to bed! It’s nearly ten, I’m so sorry I hope I haven’t been keeping you up!” The words came out of Shinji seemingly before he could stop them. “Also, how do you get up so early?”</p><p>“Well, I have a furry little alarm clock, it seems,” Kaworu said, yawning again. <em>I didn’t realize that it was this late…well, for me anyway, and I didn’t get much sleep the night before.</em> “Sorry to cut our hangout short.”</p><p>“No, it’s perfectly okay! Why didn’t you say something sooner? I mean, I was having a lot of fun, but I wouldn’t want to jeopardize your sleep!”</p><p>“I had a lot of fun too, Shinji,” Kaworu said, smiling, as Shinji put back on his shoes.</p><p>“Th-thank you for having me over, Kaworu!” Shinji said, standing upright once more and putting his hand on the doorknob, though he hesitated. “W-would it…”</p><p>“Hmm?”</p><p>Shinji stared at his feet, before slowly looking back up at Kaworu. “W-would it be o-okay if we hung out, a-again?”</p><p>“Of course! Hopefully soon. It was lovely to have you over, Shinji.”</p><p>“Th-thanks for having me!” Shinji looked relieved, as he finally turned the doorknob. “B-bye, Kaworu! Have a good night.”</p><p>“I’ll talk to you later, Shinji. Have a good evening!” Kaworu said as the other man exited, closing the door with a click.</p><p>Later, As Kaworu was brushing his teeth, getting ready for bed, he ran the evening’s events through his mind. <em>I’m glad we hung out, it was a lot of fun…but what am I doing? I can’t exactly make him gay, that would be unethical…</em> Mari was like the poster child of what a terrible idea that was. <em>And what am I going to do about Mari?</em> he sighed. <em>Do I need to do anything? Or am I just doing it for Shinji?</em></p><p>Tabris meowed at him, impatiently. Kaworu finished brushing his teeth and bent down to the cat’s level.</p><p>“Well, what do you think, Tabbie?” he asked his cat. “It’s definitely unethical what Mari’s done…should I call her out on it?” He gave Tabris some good scratches behind the ears, just the way he liked it.</p><p>“Meow!”</p><p>“Well then,” he said, picking up the cat and bringing him over to bed. “I guess that settles that, then. Goodnight, Tabris.”</p><p>Tabris settled down in his cat bed and began to purr, kneading the soft, plushy material under his paws, as Kaworu turned off the lights.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Lmao i last minute added a bunch of chapters for this week, while i was only planning to release two or three (the entirety of saturday, june 14 was originally imagined to be just one chapter as well, but in the end I ended up elaborating so much that I thought it would be better to split it up into two). So stay tuned for more!</p><p>Sorry all these chapters are very short -- I wish I could write those epically long chapters, cause I really enjoy that format, though I also like shorter chapters as well. I'm actually surprised I've written as many words as I have, haha. (I wrote a novel for nanowrimo once, but it was shite, and I did not enjoy writing it as much as I have enjoyed writing this. :) )</p><p>Thank you everyone who's read thus far!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Back to Work</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Monday, June 16, 2026: Shinji is back at work, and feeling a bit overwhelmed. Though he had fun on Saturday, he's currently leaving Kaworu on read due to his anxiety, and he feels terrible about it. He's also leaving all of his emails on unread because he Can't Deal. Oh, and Hikari tries to talk to him about the Stuff that Went Down, but he also Can't Deal with that either.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>Mondays are the worst</em>, Shinji thought as he was sitting in his cubicle. He had managed to actually drag himself to work, ditching his plan to ask Hikari if he could work from home for the week. Fortunately, this made it much less likely that his life was headed for hermit-hood. Unfortunately, this made it much harder to goof off while “at work.” Looking around to check if anyone was watching, he pulled out his phone and looked at some of his text messages instead of reading the emails he was avoiding. He kept reading and re-reading some of the texts that Kaworu had sent him on Sunday. He’d woken up to:</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">Omg, I LOVE this bread, Shinji! It’s amazing, light and fluffy but with a nice crust to it, too. Thank you so much! You’re quite the talented baker 😉</span>
</p><p>Shinji blushed just re-reading this text. He wanted to print it out and frame it on his apartment wall as a big fuck-you to his dad, who said that his cooking was trash countless times (not that Gendo ever <em>bothered</em> to cook himself) before he finally kicked Shinji out. But also, it was just such a <em>nice</em> compliment. <em>I’m not used to people being nice to me…at all</em>, he thought to himself as he looked through the rest of the conversation.</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">Ahh no, it was nothing! I’m glad you liked it though 😊</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">I’m serious: this bread is awesome!!</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">by the way, are you free on Wednesday to hang out?</span>
</p><p>…Shinji still hadn’t responded to Kaworu’s last text, which he’d sent yesterday at noon, and it was almost lunchtime now. <em>If I say yes, will it look like I have no social life? Or will I just look clingy? And to be not inconsiderate, would I have to host? Or would we go somewhere else? Agh, I have no clue…</em></p><p>Basically, the thought that he might hang out with a person twice within the span of a week short circuited his anxiety. And thus, he had not said anything since, which just made him feel worse. <em>Kaworu must think I’m ghosting him…I’m such a terrible person!</em></p><p class="separator">~~~</p><p>After coming back from eating lunch with Rei, who Shinji was <em>very</em> happy to see was now mostly recovered from last week’s illness, he discovered he had a new batch of emails he was going to try to ignore. Except…</p><p>“Oh…this one’s from Hikari…” He stared at the email, which had the subject line: “Meet today @1:30? 🙂.” The body of the email merely read, “Room 420,” probably for some conference room in NERV Inc., but it also made the whole thing seem like a prank or a joke about weed. Shinji realized with frustration that he had been BCC’d, so there was no way of knowing who else had been summoned, if anyone.</p><p><em>Is there any way that I would be able to skip it?</em> He entertained the thought for half a second before abandoning the idea: since Hikari was his boss, and she was known for her habit of pausing meetings indefinitely to ~hunt~ track down any latecomers and stragglers, dragging them into the meeting very publicly by their <em>ears</em> (all to the jeering of their coworkers, who would be inevitably angry that someone was making the meeting longer than it needed to be), there was absolutely <em>no way</em> that skipping was going to be an easier solution. He glanced at the time on the computer: 1:25.</p><p>“Well, I guess it’s time to find room 420…” he muttered to himself, though he couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.</p><p class="separator">~~~</p><p>Four minutes and thirty seconds later, Shinji <em>still</em> couldn’t find room 420, which was certainly <em>supposed</em> to be located on the same floor as his cubicle, right? “Maybe this <em>is</em> a prank,” he mumbled as he passed by what looked like the same exact arrangement of cubicles and doors — none of which said they led to Room 420 — that he’d passed by before.</p><p>“Oh, good!” a voice from behind him said. He turned around to find Hikari standing behind him. “I’m glad I ran into you — room 420 isn’t very easy to find. I actually stopped by your cubicle a minute ago to bring you there myself, but when you didn’t appear, I thought I might as well go on ahead.”</p><p>He groaned inwardly. <em>So I’ve been walking around aimlessly for no reason? But then, why didn’t she tell me that it would be hard to find or that she was going to show me the way!</em> “Ah, haha, h-hi Hikari,” he stuttered nervously.</p><p>“Hi, Shinji,” she said cheerfully, which was very much like her usually upbeat self. “This way now.”</p><p>She led the way through what seemed like a hidden maze of corridors and doorways, and Shinji was sure that he wouldn’t be able to find his way back. Finally, they came to a door, and beside it was a nameplate with the numbers 4-2-0.</p><p>She unlocked it with a key, and held it open for him. “Here we are!” she announced.</p><p>He walked in, finding a seemingly normal — if somewhat small — conference room. “Who the hell d-designed this place?” he couldn’t stop himself from saying.</p><p>“I have no idea, but what I like about this conference room is that it’s private,” Hikari said, closing the door.</p><p>“I-I’m pretty sure you’re the <em>only</em> person who k-knows that this exists.”</p><p>Hikari laughed, which surprised him. “Must have been some sort of easter egg in the building.”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“Oh, like in video games, where the programmers put in secret levels? I heard once that architects get really bored, or something, so they do funny things like put in secret rooms or rooms with funny acoustics as an ‘easter egg,’” she explained. “Take a seat, Shinji.”</p><p>“O-okay.” He obeyed, and she took the seat next to him. “S-so, um…”</p><p>“What is this about?” she guessed.</p><p>“W-well, y-y-yeah…” <em>Why did she have to meet somewhere so private? God, I really hope I didn’t ruin your marriage, and fuck if I’m being fired right now…</em></p><p>“So, Shinji…I’ve been worried about you.”</p><p><em>Sure you are…</em> he thought, but instantly felt bad for being mentally ungrateful. “I-I’m fine, I swear…” <em>Ah yes, I sound very convincing, don’t I?</em></p><p>“Shinji, I know that last week didn’t go so well,” she persisted, “and I wanted to let you know that I made Mari go to some extra…education about workplace manners and harassment.”</p><p><em>Well, what I’d really like is an apology…but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get one.</em> Not to seem unappreciative, he said, “T-thanks, y-you didn’t have to…” Shinji fidgeted with his hands instead of looking at her.</p><p>“Of course,” Hikari said, studying him.</p><p>He still wasn’t going to meet her gaze, and after a moment, he finally said, “Is that it? Can I go now?” </p><p>Hikari sighed. “Okay, fine. But Shinji, we need to talk about this at some point.”</p><p>“O-okay,” he said, getting up. “I’ll see you later?”</p><p>“Yep! See you later,” she said, returning to her cheery disposition.</p><p>He left the room and started walking, before quickly remembering that he had <em>no idea</em> where he was. Feeling super sheepish and idiotic, he stuck his head back in the conference room, relieved to see that Hikari was still there.</p><p>“Oh, hi! Did you forget something?” she asked.</p><p>“I, ummm…” He trailed off, looking at the floor, before blushing and saying, “could you show me how to get back?”</p><p>She laughed good-naturedly, and got up to walk him back.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Lol poor Shinji's nerves are shot. But also: you bastard, text Kaworu back XD</p><p>The next chapter will heavily feature some more Mari drama, so we'll see how that "education" has worked lmao.</p><p>Sidenote: I feel like this whole quarantine business is going to make ME become a hermit, which would be unfortunate. I wish I could say that I have been working diligently on this chapter, and that's why it's coming out late, but in reality, I have been binge watching some asian drama that has like 76 episodes that for some reason, is available on youtube for free (though with ads, but usually you can skip them). I started on Sunday, and I'm already on episode 32, so at least I will be back to writing in all of my spare time (well, at least I wish I were that productive) in about half a week lmao.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Kaworu Confronts Mari</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Tuesday, June 17, 2026: Kaworu's invited to lunch with Mari, and things get a little bit heated.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kaworu sat at the breakfast bar of his apartment, pieces of paper scattered around him. He was still stuck on page 33 of his composition, the same place he’d been for over a week now — granted, he’d been able to make some headway in the past few days with how he wanted the final movement of the piece to go, but he wasn’t sure how he wanted to connect the first 32 and the newer part, and it was already Tuesday. He had a meeting with his master’s thesis advisor on Wednesday, a.k.a. <em>tomorrow</em>, and Kaworu had been hoping, at least, to have a little bit more than only four new pages of music to show her.</p>
<p>“I even dreamed last night about page 33,” he told Tabris, his cat. “But perhaps it was more of a nightmare, since I woke up at 2am in a cold sweat.”</p>
<p>“Meowww!” Tabris vocalized his agreement, which Kaworu supposed meant something like, <em>Of course it was a nightmare! You woke me up in a panic! I thought we had run out of litter, or worse, cat food!</em> in human language.</p>
<p>“Sorry for disturbing your sleep, earlier,” Kaworu chuckled as he scratched behind Tabris’ ears, the cat purring in contentment. His phone suddenly dinged, and his heart nearly stopped. An unhelpful thought crept in before he could stop it: <em>What if it’s Shinji?</em></p>
<p><em>You know, I’m trying to respect his boundaries, unlike <strong>some</strong> people,</em> he told off the unwanted wishful thinking as he reached for his phone. To his relief, and displeasure, it was Mari.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">hi~ moon prince! how are you? wanna get lunch later today, and catch up a little? i haven’t seen you in AGES. ❤️</span>
</p>
<p>Kaworu sure wasn’t in the mood to just “catch up” with Mari, given how she had lied to him, and made things with Shinji very awkward. <em>But thanks to her, I did get to kiss Shinji</em>, his thoughts betrayed him. <em>Okay, but non-consensually</em>, he argued back with himself. He sighed, feeling that nothing would be resolved without a face-to-face meeting. But also…</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">Ok, but only if you’re paying.</span>
</p>
<p>Even with his job as an escort, he only barely made enough to pay the rent and utilities, buy cat food and litter, and purchase human food. And Mari made at least two times what he did in a month in a single <em>week</em>.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">of course, nya~ i was going to anyway even if you didn’t ask</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Mari: </span>
  <span class="text">usual place, at 12:30?</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">Yeah.</span>
</p>
<p>He wasn’t entirely sure what he had gotten himself into.</p>
<p class="separator">~~~</p>
<p>The two met at their childhood haunt, Philz Coffee, one of the older coffee shops in San Francisco’s gay neighborhood. As young queer teens, Kaworu and Mari had grown up watching — and later participating in — SF’s legendary gay pride parades, and it felt affirming to come to this cafe, which had a gender-neutral bathroom (ok, it actually said “unisex” on the sign, but at least there wasn’t a picture symbolizing “either a man or a woman”), and rainbows and unicorns literally <em>everywhere</em>. Now queer adults, they still enjoyed coming back here for old time’s sake.</p>
<p>After arriving, Kaworu sat down at one of the tables in the front — usually occupied by writers and students on laptops, but curiously two spots were open at the moment.</p>
<p>“Sorry, Prince!” Mari enthused as she burst into through the door. “I hope you weren’t waiting too long for me, you might miss me too much, nya.”</p>
<p>“Aha, it’s nice to see you too, Mari,” Kaworu greeted her somewhat automatically. <em>Not sure how “nice” this really is…Well, she seems somewhat normal…if there is a “normal” Mari.</em></p>
<p>“Let’s order, I’m starving!” the young woman said, which Kaworu’s growling stomach wholeheartedly agreed with.</p>
<p>After putting in their lunch orders (avocado toast and a pastry for Kaworu, and coffee with a bagel sandwich for Mari) and retrieved their food, they sat down.</p>
<p>“Well,” Mari said as Kaworu began to devour his toast, “how did the date go?”</p>
<p><em>I’ve been waiting for you to ask about that.</em> “Sorry, attorney-client privilege prevents me from sharing any details,” Kaworu tried to fend her off before eating more toast.</p>
<p>“You might be in higher education, but it sure isn’t law school,” Mari teased.</p>
<p>“Okay, how about therapist-client privilege?” he suggested.</p>
<p>“How are you a therapist?” Mari asked with a laugh.</p>
<p>“99% of the men I meet — and a good chunk of the women — could use a therapist, but instead they hire me,” Kaworu replied, though not completely un-self-consciously — he was fine, even a bit proud, of the sex work he did, but the stares and comments he got from other people sometimes were frequently on the negative side. “My job is probably 75% talking to people, at least.”</p>
<p>“Okay, okay, that’s fair,” Mari finally assented. “Well, at least tell me this: Shinji told me you guys didn’t do anything. Absolutely <em>nothing</em>. Is that right?”</p>
<p>Kaworu froze, wheels turning in his head. <em>He didn’t tell her about the kiss? I mean certainly</em> something <em>happened…but it was also nonconsensual! So it wasn’t like a kiss-kiss, maybe? Ugh, what does this mean? Probably nothing…Shinji seemed very nervous about the whole thing…but what if it means everything?</em></p>
<p>“I don’t know Puppy Boy all that well, but the first thing I did learn is that he blushes super easily,” Mari continued, smirking a bit. “And he was basically a <em>tomato</em> when I asked him about that night.”</p>
<p>“I don’t kiss and tell—“ Kaworu started to say, in his haste choosing somewhat more inflammatory words than he would have liked. <em>Is this some kind of Freudian slip?</em></p>
<p>Kaworu’s stomach sank as he saw Mari’s eyes light up. “Ooh, so you <em>kissed</em>, then?” Mari immediately picked up on that one word.</p>
<p>“And I don’t <em>not</em> kiss and tell,” Kaworu attempted to regain some ground. “Anyway, the fact of the matter is that you <em>lied</em> to me.”</p>
<p>“Okay, sure, you got me, nya,” Mari admitted, though she hardly looked apologetic. “But my gaydar had ‘straight’ for him outside of the 95% confidence interval.”</p>
<p>“What the fuck does that even mean? And besides, you gave him an awful birthday present!”</p>
<p>“It’s a stats thing, it means there was only a 5% chance that he was actually straight.” Mari shrugged. “And don’t put yourself down so much, Prince! You make a great birthday present.”</p>
<p><em>I’m not so sure about that…</em> “I heard something though about you wasting <em>other</em> people’s money, and naturally, they got mad? Do you not think that you’re being somewhat self-destructive in your relationships, Mari?”</p>
<p>This time, it was Mari’s turn to be speechless. For the first time in the conversation, seemed anywhere near to at a loss for words. “Well, like — you know that girl I was into?”</p>
<p>“Yeah? What about her?” <em>Where’s she going with this?</em></p>
<p>“Well, she kinda broke up with me over this—“</p>
<p>“See, Mari? This isn’t just big data or whatever or some video game, you’re gambling with people’s lives here,” Kaworu argued with her.</p>
<p>“But me and the Princess did make up, actually! Just yesterday in fact. I’m not that reckless.”</p>
<p>Kaworu scoffed. “Mari, I’m not sure if you’ve gotten the message, but I’m very upset with you, and it’ll take longer than just a week to make me change my mind.”</p>
<p>“Prince-y, come on, don’t be so serious,” Mari teased. “Usually whenever something happens to you, like even all that shit with your uncle, you’re pretty easy-going about it…so what is it, nya? I noticed that Shinji is definitely bothered by all of this — are you being protective of him? So was I right on the other part, that he was <em>exactly</em> your type?”</p>
<p>Kaworu felt his cheeks heat up in spite of himself. “I came here as <em>your</em> friend, Mari,” he protested, trying to turn the conversation around. “You’re being really reckless here, and you used <em>me</em> in the process. Do you realize how fucked up it was that you lied to me about a client’s orientation? How am I supposed to trust you?”</p>
<p>“Hmm, avoiding the question?” Mari persisted, her smirk growing wider. “So I <em>was</em> right, at least on that part.”</p>
<p><em>She’s really relentless, isnt’ she?</em> “Mari, please stop making this all about some weird fetishization of gay men to distract from what you’ve done.” Kaworu quickly ate the last bite of his avocado toast, picked up his pastry, and got up.</p>
<p>“Wait, but Prince—“</p>
<p>“Mari, seriously. I’m concerned about you. I’ll see you around, maybe,” Kaworu told her before abruptly leaving Mari to eat alone.</p>
<p>Right after Kaworu exited the cafe, he briefly looked back to see if she was following him, and thankfully — or perhaps depressingly — she wasn’t. <em>Well then…that didn’t go very well.</em></p>
<p>His thoughts continued to swirl as he made his way back to his apartment. <em>Either way, I still feel awful for having believed her. I feel even worse though because I <strong>am</strong> super into him…maybe that’s why he hasn’t replied yet about Wednesday…not that he has to!</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>might end up changing this chapter later because i'm really not 100% happy with it, but i think i might also be a little bit too anxious about posting it so i thought i would bite the bullet. (<strike><em>I mustn't run away. I mustn't run away. I mustn't run away.</em></strike>)</p>
<p>thank you everyone who's read thus far!!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Corporate Group Presentations</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Wednesday, June 18, 2026: Shinji’s stuck in a meeting with all the coworkers who he thinks hate him, and then Hikari asks him to help her put away things afterwards, though he’s not sure why. And also, a certain white haired boy finally gets an answer to his texts…</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shinji wasn’t sure how he wasn’t having a heart or panic attack at the moment, but he was sitting in a conference room with Asuka, Mari, Kensuke, Rei, Touji, Hikari, and Hikari’s boss Misato as Hikari presented the nearly-final product of the project they were all working on. She even had one of those giant sticky note pads on an easel, for jotting down ideas and brainstorming, full of diagrams and Misato’s suggestions for improvements.</p>
<p>He hadn’t dared say anything during the whole meeting — which went over by fifteen minutes due to Asuka constantly interrupting and Mari going off on tangents, while Misato seemed to only add fuel to the fire by cracking jokes. But Mari and Asuka otherwise ignored him, which he was fine with.</p>
<p>“Nice job, Hikari!” Misato told Shinji’s boss once the meeting was finally over, and Mari and Asuka had already left. Kensuke also excused himself (something about getting a notification from one of the alien conspiracy facebook groups he was a part of). “Looks like it’s coming along great. I’ll be in my office if you need me!”</p>
<p>“Sure!” Hikari beamed at the praise, nodding as Misato left the room, but not before winking conspiratorially at Shinji.</p>
<p><em>W-what was that about?!</em> he thought, until he realized that someone was speaking to him, who happened to be Hikari.</p>
<p>“S-sorry,” he told her. “What was that?”</p>
<p>“Could you help me clean up here? The giant sticky note pad is a bit unwieldy for me to carry,” Hikari asked him.</p>
<p>Touji’s “Hikari needs help” radar seemed to be sounding alarm bells as he got off his ass and walked up behind her. “Hikari, don’t worry about it! I can do that.”</p>
<p>“I really need Shinji to do it though—“</p>
<p>“But babe I’m serio—YOWW!”</p>
<p>Hikari had stomped on his foot, casually, as one does. “I <em>said</em> that <em>Shinji</em> needs to help me put it back.”</p>
<p>“Okay, okay,” he said, scratching his head. “I’ll be leaving, then.”</p>
<p>“See you, Touji,” Shinji said lamely as the other man left.</p>
<p>“Thanks for helping out!” Hikari smiled at Shinji.</p>
<p><em>As if you gave me a choice…</em> “Ah, of course, no problem.” Shinji picked up the giant pad of paper as Hikari gathered her work laptop and its charger. “Ready to go?” he asked.</p>
<p>She did one last sweep around the room to make sure she didn’t leave anything. “Yep!” she said, once she was done.</p>
<p>The walk back to Hikari’s cubicle started out awkwardly silent. <em>Why did she want <strong>me</strong> to do this, instead of Touji?</em> Shinji wondered.</p>
<p>“So, Shinji,” Hikari began to say, “there’s going to be a little group get-together this Friday.”</p>
<p>“Oh?” Shinji shifted the huge pad of paper in his arms, which was definitely awkward to carry. <em>Where is she going with this?</em></p>
<p>“And we’re going to go out to a bar for drinks — on NERV’s company card! — and I wanted to invite you to join us.”</p>
<p>Shinji’s body kept on walking, but his mind was going nowhere, like a hamster on a wheel: lots of movement, but no actual result action. <em>What the fuck? How could I go hang out with all those people? And in a bar, probably with a bunch of other strangers who will instantly know just how awkward I am? And what if <strong>Mari</strong> is going? Wait a second…</em></p>
<p>“So, will you be coming?” Hikari reiterated.</p>
<p>“Is Ayanami going?” Shinji asked, first. <em>If she’s going…then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.</em></p>
<p>“…No, unfortunately, something about a doctor’s appointment — on a Friday night, though!”</p>
<p><em>Well then…</em> “…W-will Mari be going?” He hated how small his voice sounded.</p>
<p>The two arrived at Hikari’s cubicle, and Hikari put down her stuff, sighing. “Yes, but—”</p>
<p>“S-sorry, I-I w-would love t-to, b-but I have p-plans!” The lie slipped out before he knew what he was saying. <em>What the fuck am I doing?!</em></p>
<p>Hikari raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh really? What’re you doing that’s so important? This is going to be a team bonding experience!”</p>
<p>“Umm, well, I meeting up with a friend, and like we already set up everything so like I really can’t back out.” He couldn’t help but fidget, and he could already feel himself breaking out in a cold sweat.  <em>I’m being so vague, she’s bound to find out.</em></p>
<p>Hikari sighed, once more. “Well, okay. I hope you know I do really want you to be there with us, right?”</p>
<p>“T-thanks, Hikari,” Shinji said before leaving for his own cubicle.</p>
<p>Shinji sank into his desk chair, leaning all the way back. <em>Well that was a blatant lie…I wonder if Hikari noticed? Probably. I’m an awful liar…</em> He had to wonder, though, if it wasn’t too late to maybe actually hang out with a friend…</p>
<p><em>But Kaworu must hate me now!</em> the unhelpful part of his brain thought, though a voice that sounded a little bit like Dr. Akagi’s chimed in to say, <em>Well, what’s the harm in trying?</em></p>
<p>Shinji pulled out his phone, and opened up the messaging app, and proceeded to stare again at Kaworu’s last text, asking him to do something on Wednesday — <em>today</em>.</p>
<p>
  <em>Well, it might be too late to do something today, and hell, it might be too late to do anything at all…but I am free Friday.</em>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">I’m so, so sorry! Things have been busy and a little bit crazy.</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">so, like, i’m really sorry but I can’t do wednesday/today</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">umm, idk, if you hate me now, i’d understand if you do!!</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">but if you don’t, would you be free to hang out and do something on friday?</span>
</p>
<p>He set his phone down on his desk, and groaned and put his head in his hands. <em>What have I done!</em> he panicked. He opened one eye slowly at his phone screen, which now had — in tiny text — the word “read.” So Kaworu had seen it, already! <em>But he isn't replying yet…</em></p>
<p>Suddenly, his phone buzzed, and then buzzed again.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">No, it’s completely okay!!</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">Tbh, I’ve had a couple of weirdly busy days too, and I’m not sure what I was thinking because I had a huge meeting with my advisor today and I have a ton of work tonight, so don’t worry!</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">lol I don’t hate you 🙂 I’d never dream of it, Shinji</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">I am free Friday night — do you have anything in mind?</span>
</p>
<p>Shinji had to laugh, all the stress melting away at once.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">umm, I was under the impression that you had something in mind, since you asked originally</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">so, like, what was it?</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">Haha, okay!</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">Well, since you asked…</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Apologies for getting this up so late! (I've had a number of weird health things come up in the past two weeks, which has been kind of draining. Also, I am still not done with the asian drama i've been watching, but I only have like 5 episodes left lmao).</p>
<p>I have MANY plans for what happens for this friday hangout lmao, so that was also partially slowing me down because I was doing "research." I ended up staying up until 2am one day doing this "research" which also threw things out of whack.</p>
<p>I probably won't be able to post as frequently since I was really coasting on the chapters that I had already written for about a month before I actually started posting, but I hope to at least post 1-2 chapters each week!</p>
<p>Thank you for reading! &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Dr. Akagi Approves of Shinji's Friendship with Kaworu</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Thursday, June 19, 2026: Dr. Akagi sees Shinji for his weekly appointment, and is pleasantly surprised to learn that he actually followed through with his homework from last week.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dr. Akagi sat down in her usual chair, as Shinji sat down in his typical spot. She already had her clipboard and favorite pen (a gift from Maya, which had a cat on the non-writing end, and you pressed on the tail to retract the ballpoint tip — and come to think of it, she needed to ask Maya to buy some more cat food on the way home from work…) in hand, and crossed her legs, making herself comfortable.</p>
<p>She had noticed a definite change in Shinji over these past few weeks: though he was definitely way more anxious, he also seemed much livelier than before, and today was no exception. Instead of his usual blank or worried face, he even looked like he was <em>smiling</em> a bit, which was very rare. <em>Though I am still worried about what happened with his birthday…</em></p>
<p>“So, Shinji, how are you?” She jotted down a note about the smile on her clipboard.</p>
<p>“Oh, umm, I’m fine!” The young man continued to wear the faint traces of a smile across his face.</p>
<p>“You look a little bit more than fine, Shinji. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but you even seem a bit happy right now.”</p>
<p>Shinji’s smile finally turned into a frown. “You’re not making fun of me, are you?”</p>
<p><em>Ah, this is the Shinji that I’m familiar with.</em> “I would never make fun of a client, unless they wanted me to as a part of therapy, for some reason, such as roleplay. So, are you feeling at least more positive?”</p>
<p>Shinji relaxed a bit, sinking back into the couch. “Y-yeah, I-I think.”</p>
<p>“You seem unsure, why?”</p>
<p>This seemed to put him on edge again. “Well, the story of my life has been that…p-people leave,” he said, avoiding her gaze.</p>
<p><em>I’m not sure that it’s that black and white…though there is his father, so maybe never mind. The poor kid…</em> She made a note of his fear of abandonment. “Are you having trouble telling whether you’re happy, or whether this happiness will last?”</p>
<p>“Y-yeah…I think so. Both.” He still wasn’t looking at her, instead gazing out the window.</p>
<p><em>Maybe we need to get a little bit more grounded, so he doesn’t get lost in bad thoughts.</em> Dr. Akagi noticed that one of her legs was falling asleep, and so she uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, in the opposite way. “Hmm, well, let’s talk about how your week went, and see how your feelings are playing out in your behavior.”</p>
<p>To Dr. Akagi’s relief, he finally looked up at her again. “Oh, o-okay.”</p>
<p><em>Shinji seems to be a bit reluctant to get started, but how do I get him to open up? And what was his homework from last week? …Oh! Okay, I got this…</em> “So, did you end up actually texting your friend — what was his name again?”</p>
<p>“K-Kaworu. And yes, I did!”</p>
<p>Dr. Akagi wasn’t sure if she was just imagining it — or projecting it — but Shinji’s eyes really seemed to light up when he talked about this Kaworu person. “That’s great, Shinji! What date did you set to meet up?” <em>His birthday catastrophe might have to take a back burner for today, since I have a feeling that this has a more immediate positive effect on his life.</em></p>
<p>“O-oh, w-we actually already hung out…just last Saturday.”</p>
<p><em>Wow, that was fast…it took forever to get Shinji to trust me, even just a little bit. Interesting, hmm…this is also probably the most notes I’ve ever taken in a session with Shinji, yet.</em> “How did it go?”</p>
<p>Shinji broke out into the widest smile she had ever witnessed on his face. “It was really fun! Well, or, scary, because I was watching him play a horror game, and I was so freaked out afterwards, when I was going home, I felt like people were following me, so I had to call an uber, aha. But it was kind of cathartic, too?”</p>
<p>She scribbled the note about catharsis on the piece of paper in front of her. “That’s great, Shinji! Do you think you’ll meet up again sometime in the future?” <em>I hope I’m not placing too much pressure on the poor kid…this was already a big leap for him.</em></p>
<p>As expected, Shinji shrunk back, slumping into the couch as if he wanted it to swallow him whole. “W-well, umm, about that…he texted me on Sunday, and I d-didn’t reply until yesterday, s-so now I’m worried he hates me.”</p>
<p>“Hmm, that is tricky, though completely understandable that you were not able to reply until a few days later.” She pursed her lips, thinking. “Well, did you try asking him if he hated you?”</p>
<p>“Well, y-yes.”</p>
<p><em>Way to go!</em> “That’s great, Shinji — it’s always good to communicate, instead of ruminating. What did he say?”</p>
<p>“Well, that he didn’t hate me…and we are going to hang out again on Friday — oh my god that’s tomorrow! …But what if he’s lying?”</p>
<p><em>Hmmm, so maybe not so much as trust, as a willingness to go on? But it’s awesome that he’s actually going to continue to invest in this friendship — he needs other relationships in his life.</em> She clicked the cat pen’s tail a few times (a bad habit of hers, though luckily Shinji didn’t seem to notice so much, or at least he didn’t let on that it bothered him). “Hmm, I suppose we could always imagine that others could be lying — and it’s always a possibility — but what if I told you that it was a necessary risk that we had to take?”</p>
<p>This time, Shinji didn’t say anything.</p>
<p><em>I’m not sure if he’s ready, or willing to hear this, but…</em> Dr. Akagi took a deep breath. “We won’t be able to connect with others unless we take a leap of faith and decide to take them at face value.”</p>
<p>“Easy for you to say,” Shinji finally mumbled.</p>
<p>“Hmm, well, so far, you’ve hung out twice, and I want to ask you something, Shinji: have the risks outweighed the benefits, so far?”</p>
<p>“I-it was so hard, in the moment, to text him, and I literally had to drag myself over to see him…but once we were hanging out, it felt so much…easier?” He paused, looking down at his shoes. “But I was also still anxious the entire time. I felt like such a mess, and being so on edge for so long was incredibly draining.”</p>
<p>“Even so, you still had fun.” Dr. Akagi paused to jot down some more notes. “Shinji, antidepressants — which we still haven’t discussed for you, though it is probably worth trying them someday — can help to make the anxiety more bearable, but it never goes away completely. Likewise, therapy also will not ‘cure’ your anxiety, but it will help to make it tolerable. Do you think that with time, maybe that level of anxiety could be tolerable, in favor of having a good time?”</p>
<p>Shinji swallowed. “M-maybe…” He paused, apparently considering something. “…as long as it doesn’t turn out that he actually hates me.” But this time, there was a small smile on his face.</p>
<p><em>This poor kid,</em> she thought to herself, even as she found herself chuckling. “Good,” she said, grinning. “Well, then, let’s get to work.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Sorry for not posting for so long! I've been doing a lot of work on Shinji's Friday <strike>date</strike> outing with Kaworu, which is going to be the next chapter, as well as future chapters to come.</p>
<p>Side note: I made a Quora account at some point, and for some reason I keep on getting emails from them about various therapy-related questions (made mostly by people in therapy, and mostly about what the therapists are thinking about, and I keep on clicking on and reading the answers to these questions which is reinforcing Quora into sending me even more emails about these therapy questions lol), which partially inspired this chapter.</p>
<p>Thank you for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Friday Night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Friday, June 20, 2026: Shinji meets up with Kaworu at a huge concert hall, for some reason. Whatever could that reason be???</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shinji was sitting on the steps outside of a huge white building domed building whose facade was covered with columns, and statues of some dude who seemed to be holding up the columns themselves. It almost looked like the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., although Shinji only knew that one from pictures. Apparently this was the Davies Symphony Hall, where Kaworu had asked him to meet up at 7pm sharp, and it was just about 6:59pm. Shinji had been super paranoid about getting lost or getting stuck in traffic, or both, so he’d been there for nearly fifteen minutes already.</p><p>He was just about to check his phone (for the fifth time)<br/>
to make sure he <em>really</em> was at the right location when a hand gently touched his shoulder, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.</p><p>“Ah, sorry to startle you — I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long?” Kaworu was standing above him, a little red in the face. “Sorry I’m late! I just ran over here as fast as I could.”</p><p>“Ah, no, I just got here, aha…” Shinji stood up. “So, umm, w-what are we going to be listening to today?”</p><p>Kaworu smiled. “You’ll see.”</p><p>After Kaworu showed the tickets to the usher and got them two programs, they went to find their seats, which were in a little recessed box overlooking the stage where an orchestra — minus the conductor — was sitting, musicians toying with their instruments as they waited for the performance to begin. There was also three rows of seats behind and above the stage, where more people wearing all black were seated.</p><p>The two had seats next to each other in the front row of the box. Kaworu handed Shinji a program, which he took gratefully and began to flip through.</p><p>“Have you seen the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Chorus before?” Kaworu asked, idly making small talk.</p><p>“No, I haven’t actually got the chance yet until right now,” Shinji said, blushing slightly. He finally got past all of the advertisements and the usual praises for the orchestra’s benefactors and sponsors and reached the actual program part of the program. “Wow, Beethoven’s ninth symphony?!”</p><p>“I hope you enjoy Beethoven.” Kaworu sat back, crossing his legs as he too began to skim the program. “He’s definitely one of my favorites.”</p><p>“Mine too!” Shinji smiled. “What do you like about Beethoven?”</p><p>“Well, there’s a certain substance and genius to his works, something different from Mozart,” Kaworu mused. “I have to admit that I’m also somewhat here for my own benefit — you know that piece I’m composing?”</p><p>“Yeah, of course!” <em>…oh, so he didn’t want to just hang out with me? …not that I care that much!</em></p><p>“Well, it’s supposed to be in the style of Beethoven, and to tell the truth,” and now it was Kaworu’s turn to blush, to Shinji’s surprise, “I’m a bit stuck, so I was hoping that bringing a fresh pair of eyes — or ears? — might help me a little bit. I hope you don’t mind me being a little bit selfish?”</p><p>“Ah, it’s no problem! I haven’t listened to enough live music as I probably should…” he trailed off. <em>I guess though it’s kind of nice to be needed? Though I’m probably going to be useless!</em> “I don’t think I’ll be as helpful though as you might think—“</p><p>“Nonsense, I’m confident your different point of view will shed some light on Beethoven, something I haven’t thought of before.” Kaworu smiled at Shinji. “I also thought it would be lovely to invite you to enjoy some live classical music, given that you are a cellist yourself.”</p><p><em>He really has too much confidence in me…</em> “Ahh, well, it really has been too long since I last watched an orchestra…”</p><p>“Have you ever listened to Beethoven’s 9th in full?” Kaworu asked.</p><p>“…No,” Shinji admitted. “I’ve heard Ode to Joy thousands of times, of course. But I don’t think I’d even recognize the first three movements if you played them for me right now.”</p><p>“Well, at least you know there are four movements!” Kaworu said, voice full of playful mirth. “Oh, look, it seems as though they’re about to begin.”</p><p>Shinji turned his gaze back on the stage, where a man in a tuxedo was now walking towards the conductor’s podium. He had shoulder-length wavy gray hair that flopped behind him as he walked. Once on the podium, he turned to the audience and gave a bow, and his hair also flounced delightfully once he returned to an upright position.</p><p>Shinji couldn’t help but giggle, which he tried to stifle with his hand to no avail. <em>Man, Kaworu is going to think I’m nuts or something.</em></p><p>Instead, Kaworu leaned close to him and whispered, “I <em>love</em> this conductor, he’s really energetic and fun to watch,” before settling back into his seat and giving Shinji a wink, just as the orchestra began the first movement: the <em>allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso</em>, or “fast, quickly, and bright, but not too much, and a little majestic.”</p><p>Shinji thought that while this movement was certainly not nearly as <em>iconic</em> as Ode to Joy, it was amazing to hear how Beethoven had layered all of the instruments together. <em>I can only really play two notes at most, at a time, on the cello. So how did he figure out how to get at least ten different instruments to work together like this!</em></p><p>~~~</p><p>The second movement, <em>molto vivace</em>, or “very lively and fast,” was just as new to Shinji as the first movement had been.</p><p><em>I really haven’t listened to the first two movements of Beethoven’s 9th symphony <strong>ever</strong>?</em> he couldn’t help but wonder.</p><p>~~~</p><p>Shinji resigned himself to reading the program during the symphony’s third movement, played <em>adagio molto e cantabile</em>, Italian for “more slowly with great expression, and lyrical.” They included biographies of the conductor, Beethoven, as well as some background on the piece. He would have felt guilty for not staring at the orchestra during this slower movement, but Kaworu had pulled a small notebook and pencil out of his pocket and was working on scoring some music.</p><p>Shinji hadn’t even realized that he was staring at how Kaworu was so practiced at writing the delicate little eighth and sixteenth notes and accidentals until Kaworu started writing words instead: <em>I got an idea while listening, and wanted to commit it to paper before I forgot. :)<br/>
</em> He looked up at Shinji, and gave him a real-life smile, before returning to jotting down more music notes, leaving Shinji blushing but still looking curiously as Kaworu continued to work.</p><p>~~~</p><p>At the very beginning of the fourth and last movement, the finale, otherwise known as Ode to Joy, Shinji <em>still</em> didn’t really recognize the music. However, the forceful way it began really did wake him up. But slowly, slowly, the main musical refrain of Ode to Joy began to sneak its way into the piece, instrument by instrument it seemed; first the clarinets, then the double basses and cellos, then violas, second violins, and the bassoon. Finally, the first violins joined the rest of orchestra, and Shinji got chills up his spine as the brass, percussion, and woodwinds came alive in that oh so familiar refrain.</p><p>But just as soon as it had started, it died down…only to for the orchestra to start back up again, at full force, and then suddenly the whole chorus got up at once and opened the binders holding their parts of the music. Shinji certainly wasn’t prepared as one man suddenly began to sing, in a rich bass:</p><p class="lyrics">
  O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!<br/>
Sondern laßt uns angenehmere anstimmen,<br/>
und freudenvollere.</p><p>Shinji flipped through the program until he came to the German poem that Beethoven had set to music. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any knowledge of German whatsoever, and the San Francisco Symphony had failed to include a translation.</p><p>Kaworu, on the other hand, was sitting next to Shinji contently with his eyes closed. For the first time, Shinji could look at his friend without worrying about those carmine eyes burning into his soul, as the whole chorus now sang:</p><p class="lyrics">Freude!<br/>
Freude!</p><p><em>Kaworu’s really has very nice features…</em> he thought as he looked at the other man, while the orchestra now resumed playing at full force. Finely shaped nose, chin, somewhat angular jaw, high cheekbones, long almost-white eyelashes that made it look like frost had dusted Kaworu’s pale cheeks, and lips—</p><p>Shinji suddenly was reminded of the last time he really got a good look at Kaworu: when they met, to be precise. The kiss, or the non-kiss?, or—</p><p>Shinji was startled out of his thoughts by a gentle touch on his hand. Resurfacing from his inner [experience???? there’s a word for this, kinda like inner life but idk], he realized to his horror that Kaworu was now looking at Shinji, eyes open, and Shinji had continued to stare at him blankly while lost in his own thoughts. Shinji blushed fiercely as Kaworu good-naturedly raised an eyebrow, took out his pencil and made a little writing motion in his hand as he handed it to Shinji, who desperately tried to not drop it.</p><p>Shinji, supremely embarrassed, wracked his mind for something he could say in the moment. He picked up the program — which he’d left open in his lap — to write a note to Kaworu when he remembered his I-can’t-understand-German dilemma. He scribbled, “The lyrics sound so powerful, I wonder what these mean?” before showing it to Kaworu.</p><p>Kaworu took it, read the tiny note, before smiling and proceeding to write — in the same tiny, elegant hand Shinji had watched him write the music notes — in the margin.</p><p>Shinji again found himself distracted by Kaworu’s features — this time his hair, which he thought looked rather fluffy and soft — and was startled Yet Again out of his thoughts by Kaworu handing him back the program and smiling. Shinji picked it up, and there, written next to each line, was English. <em>Does Kaworu know German?!</em></p><p>He mouthed a “thank you” to Kaworu just as the chorus began to sing again.</p><p class="lyrics">
  Freude, schöner Götterfunken (Joy, beautiful spark of divinity)<br/>
Tochter aus Elysium, (Daughter from Elysium,)<br/>
Wir betreten feuertrunken, (We enter, burning with fervor,)<br/>
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum! (heavenly being, your sanctuary!)<br/>
Deine Zauber binden wieder (Your magic brings together)<br/>
Was die Mode streng geteilt; (what custom has sternly divided.)<br/>
Alle Menschen werden Brüder, (All men shall become brothers,)<br/>
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt. (wherever your gentle wings hover.)<br/>
</p><p>A surge of emotions — perhaps joy, indeed — flooded through him.</p><p class="lyrics">
  Wem der große Wurf gelungen, (Whoever has been lucky enough)<br/>
Eines Freundes Freund zu sein; (to become a friend to a friend,)<br/>
Wer ein holdes Weib errungen, (Whoever has found a beloved wife,)<br/>
Mische seinen Jubel ein! (let him join our songs of praise!)<br/>
Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele (Yes, and anyone who can call one soul)<br/>
Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund! (his own on this earth!)<br/>
Und wer's nie gekonnt, der stehle (Any who cannot, let them slink away)<br/>
Weinend sich aus diesem Bund! (from this gathering in tears!)<br/>
</p><p>Shinji was absolutely captivated by the combined power of the chorus and orchestra, not to mention the strange intimacy that Kaworu initiated by contentedly sitting there, seemingly unabashed, with his eyes closed. He felt like he had been struck by a spell, unable to control himself as he alternated between staring at either the orchestra and chorus, or at Kaworu.</p><p class="lyrics">
  Freude trinken alle Wesen (Every creature drinks in joy)<br/>
An den Brüsten der Natur; (at nature’s breast.)<br/>
Alle Guten, alle Bösen (Good and Evil alike)<br/>
Folgen ihrer Rosenspur. (follow her trail of roses.)<br/>
Küsse gab sie uns und Reben, (She gives us kisses and wine,)<br/>
Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod; (a true friend, even in death.)<br/>
Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben, (Even the worm was given desire,)<br/>
Und der Cherub steht vor Gott. (and the cherub stands before God.)<br/>
</p><p class="lyrics">
  Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen (Gladly, just as His suns hurtle)<br/>
Durch des Himmels prächt'gen Plan, (through the glorious universe,)<br/>
Laufet, Brüder, eure Bahn, (So you, brothers, should run your course,)<br/>
Freudig, wie ein Held zum Siegen. (joyfully, like a conquering hero.)<br/>
</p><p class="lyrics">
  Seid umschlungen, Millionen! (Be embraced, you millions!)<br/>
Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt! (This kiss is for the whole world!)<br/>
Brüder, über'm Sternenzelt (Brothers, above the canopy of stars)<br/>
Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen. (must dwell a loving father.)<br/>
</p><p>At “Kuss,” Kaworu opened one eye, and yet again, much to Shinji’s misfortune, he had been staring at Kaworu at the time. Shinji blushed fiercely at having been caught and turned his gaze back on the orchestra and chorus, while Kaworu smiled and closed his eyes again.</p><p class="lyrics"> Ihr stürzt nieder, Millionen? (Do you bow before Him, you millions?)<br/>
Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt? (Do you sense your Creator, o world?)<br/>
Such' ihn über'm Sternenzelt! (Seek Him above the canopy of stars!)<br/>
Über Sternen muss er wohnen. (He must dwell beyond the stars.)<br/>
</p><p>The piece ended with an immense roar from the audience as everyone stood to give a standing ovation, clapping, whistling, cheering, Shinji and Kaworu included. As they stood, clapping, Kaworu leaned in close to ask, “Did you enjoy that?”</p><p>Shinji felt like he was practically high. “Of course! Did you?”</p><p>“Yes, immensely,” he said, a catlike grin on his face.</p><p>~~~</p><p>As Shinji and Kaworu were walking home afterwards, since Kaworu’s apartment was just along the way, they continued to exclaim how amazing that performance had been.</p><p>“You really cannot beat live music,” Kaworu said, “and I know I’ve said that like a billion times today—“</p><p>“But it’s really so true, isn’t it?” Shinji finished for him, and they both laughed. Shinji, though, still had a burning question on the tip of his tongue…</p><p>“Hmm, what are you thinking about?” Kaworu asked, as if reading his mind.</p><p>“Oh, u-um, I-I was just wondering,” Shinji stuttered, flustered slightly by the other man’s question, “a-are you fluent in German or something?”</p><p>“Ah, yes, a bit,” Kaworu said, though Shinji highly suspected that he was being overly modest.</p><p>“Wow, that’s so cool!”</p><p>“Ehh, I just lived for a bit in Germany when I was younger, so it was kind of easy to learn the language.”</p><p>“Still, though, I only know English fluently at this point, and I’m <em>maybe</em> conversational Japanese, though I’m kind of rusty…”</p><p>“Same here, I haven’t had the chance to speak Japanese with someone for a long time.”</p><p><em>Wow! Kaworu knows at least <strong>three</strong> languages?! I knew he was being unreasonably humble.</em> “W-would you want to try to p-practice together sometime, maybe?”</p><p>“I would <em>love</em> that, Shinji.”</p><p>As the two men continued walking and talking together, absorbed in their conversation, they didn’t notice as a dark car followed them down the streets of San Francisco…</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I spent much of my time writing this listening to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOjHhS5MtvA">this</a>, which I also had never listened to in its entirety, ever, which was funny.</p><p>Also, it was hilarious how long it took me to figure out that i should have them go see a performance of beethoven's ninth. Apparently it's been way too long since I've watched Episode 24. I knew I wanted to have them see an orchestra play, but I didn't know what piece, and I spent way longer than necessary looking up cello concertos.</p><p>Thank you for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. In Which Kaworu Seeks Help for his Culinary Hopelessness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Monday, June 23, 2026: Kaworu's shit at cooking, and he realizes his new friend is quite the chef. He makes a request of Shinji that Shinji is only too happy to oblige.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kaworu stretched for the first time in what felt like ages, and looked at his watch, which read 9:57 — in the morning. <em>Shinji must be up by now, probably at work…</em> he thought to himself. They had been texting back and forth all weekend, since the concert (no more long dry spells), which considerably brightened Kaworu’s mood. It also helped that he had finally made headway on the 33rd page in a way that didn’t feel absolutely insipid, which was a plus, and a good stretch — and maybe getting up and walking around a little — would be a great way to celebrate finishing it, at least for now. <em>Who knows what she'll say, now that it's semi-finished?</em> he mused, thinking of his advisor. He could never predict how she’d react to his compositions.</p><p>He got up to pet Tabris, who of course wanted more dry food (though it was bad for cats, Kaworu sometimes couldn’t help but indulge his favorite disgruntled furry son), and thought what he might like for lunch. While his cooking skills weren’t entirely missing, he certainly didn’t seem to have the natural talent for cooking that Shinji did. Whenever he texted Shinji around mealtime, he would usually get a picture of whatever divine creation Shinji was eating at the moment. The pictures of perfectly cooked french toast with syrup and homemade whip cream, soba noodle bowl with beef teriyaki and stir-fried vegetables, and recently a perfectly cooked medium-rare steak with potatoes and carrots got Kaworu’s mouth practically salivating.</p><p><em>I guess Shinji’s cooking is just like him…I could just eat it all up</em>, he thought before he could stop himself. <em>Ugh that was gross — is it really okay for me to hang out with Shinji? I don’t want to cross any boundaries…or end up blaming Shinji for my own inability to let go of any thoughts of having more than a platonic relationship with him.</em></p><p>Still, though, Shinji’s cooking was probably the best of anyone’s that Kaworu knew, and Kaworu had observed that this was the one hobby that Shinji both really seemed to enjoy and also comfortably acknowledged that he was skilled in. <em>I wonder if I asked…would he?</em> Kaworu got out his phone, perhaps all too hastily deciding to text Shinji anyway.</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">Hey, I just keep thinking about how amazing that bread you gave me was and how much I miss it now that it’s gone lol</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">But i’m also just culinarily challenged…I was wondering what you would think of giving me a cooking lesson sometime?</span>
</p><p>The other man started responding immediately, which Kaworu was ashamed to say sort of sent his heart racing as he saw the little “…” flash across the screen, signaling that Shinji was typing up his reply. <em>I feel like I’m in high school again…surely he’s only texting me back this quickly because it’s Monday morning, and texting is more fun than office work? It’s definitely not anything else…right? I shouldn’t get my hopes up or anything that this means anything more.</em></p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">I would love to!</span>
</p><p>Despite himself, Kaworu’s heart practically soared out of his chest at reading the word “love.” <em>What did I say! I’m really getting carried away here.</em></p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">What would you like to make? The bread kinda requires an expensive-ish pot thing</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">But I would be down to teach you just like the basics of whatever you’d like! 🙂</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">And also I would love to bake some more bread for you, just let me know!</span>
</p><p>Kaworu really felt like the boundaries of communication were more broken down when he was texting Shinji instead of talking to him face to face. Shinji’s stutter, while endearing, appeared to make him extremely self-conscious. <em>Though it’s not like he means anything more by these texts than he would by his words in person…Shinji’s just being friendly! Because he’s a nice person!</em></p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">Omg thank you so much!!</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">And this is kind of embarrassing, since I’m the one who asked…</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">But I have no idea what I’d like to make ^^;</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">That’s okay! We can just work on basics, and make it into a meal</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">Hmm, what do you have in terms of skills with a knife, frying a sunny side-up egg, etc?</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">…lol nothing, basically</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">I can put together a sandwich, and boil water in an electric kettle for instant ramen</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">also if it isn’t too much trouble, I would love some more of your bread, if you’re offering!</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">That’s okay! I can teach you how to chop vegetables and stuff</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">and yes! I’d love to</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">When would be best for you?</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">Hmm…are you free this friday?</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">Yes! Thank you so much for doing this btw</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">If there’s literally anything I can do for you in return, just lmk!!</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">Nahh, it’s okay! cooking is fun for me lol, and it'll be fun to cook with a friend! 🙂</span>
</p><p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">^_^</span>
</p><p>Even though Kaworu was now super excited for this Friday, and had something to look forward to besides meetings with his advisor, he irrationally felt friendzoned at the same time. <em>It’s not like I’m even expecting this to go anywhere romantically, in the first place…</em></p><p>“Agh!” He sat with his head in his hands in frustration. Tabris, on the other hand, thought that this was the perfect time to intervene for some pets, nudging at Kaworu’s leg gently. He picked up the feline and began to pet him, asking the cat, “What exactly am I doing?”</p><p>Tabris only purred in return.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I was very tempted to title this "In Which Kaworu Feels Irrationally Friendzoned." Oh Kaworu, can you really deal with just being friends with Shinji?</p><p>Hello! I am back, aha. Apologies for the long wait -- I had a long dry spell because I got depressed about some stuff, and then I unexpectedly had a lot more work. But my state had an insane power outage because of Hurricane Isaias (hope anyone else who is reading and was affected is safe!!), and 98% of my town had no power! It was crazy -- even the cell towers didn't have any power. BUT, since thank goodness me and everyone I knew were safe, just no power in august in new england (and the weather cooperated actually, it was unseasonably cool), this was an amazing time to write lmao, since my house had no power, I had absolutely no access to the internet, and I couldn't be distracted by anything electronic. I was writing fanfic by candlelight at some points, pen on paper. So long story short, I have actually been working only on fanfic for like the past 5 days or so. We just got power back last night lol. I'm still working on the next few chapters a lil bit, but they should be coming out at more regular intervals now, hopefully!</p><p>I think we're coming to the last third of this fic soon, which is crazy. I've never finished a multichapter fic in my life, ever, especially not one with 20+ chapters. But I also have a sequel planned lol. So thank you to everyone who's been reading and leaving kudos and comments! I really appreciate it. &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Therapy is (or can be) Emotionally Draining</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Thursday, June 26, 2026: Shinji goes to therapy again, but when Dr. Akagi asks the hard questions, he clams up immediately. Afterwards, he's so tired, he almost entirely forgets <em>who's</em> coming over for dinner tomorrow.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>content/trigger warnings for assuming someone's gender (the person doing the assuming corrects himself immediately) and descriptions/expressions regarding therapy avoidance (please go to your therapist!! or find a different one if you don't think it's working out -- i promise there is someone for you out there &lt;3)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Shinji wasn’t sure when he’d last been so excited during one of his therapy sessions. Well, at least, maybe besides last week. “Then we walked back home after the concert, just talking and stuff and getting to know each other, and I actually had so much fun! And I haven’t ghosted him since, either. Oh, and I’m also going to give him a little cooking lesson tomorrow which I’m <em>actually</em> really looking forward to!” It felt weird for Shinji to be in anticipation of a social event and not be a total mess, as a result. <em>I rarely look forward to <strong>any</strong> social engagements…something is really different here.</em></p>
<p>“That’s wonderful, Shinji!” Dr. Akagi said.</p>
<p>“Yeah, it’s great to have a friend like Kaworu — it still takes effort for me to be around him, so I do still feel kinda drained after a while…but I also feel like he’s putting in effort to?”</p>
<p>“Relationships do require work, and it sounds like this one though has struck a healthy balance — which I have to congratulate you on, Shinji! I know it isn’t easy for you to meet and befriend new people, usually.”</p>
<p><em>Well, I didn’t exactly choose to meet him…</em> Shinji blushed, thinking back to <em>that</em> night. “Ah, thanks, Dr. Akagi! There have been some bumps in the road…but luckily, I — or we? — have been able to work through them.” <em>Thus far, anyway…</em></p>
<p>“So, Shinji, since this seems to be an area of your life where things are going well and feeling pretty stable, I was wondering if we could change subjects for the remainder of our time?”</p>
<p>Shinji swallowed and was overcome by the desire to look only at his shoes. “Umm…maybe that’s okay…”</p>
<p>“So, Shinji,” Dr. Akagi began to say, without skipping a beat, “I’ve been a little bit worried about what happened on your birthday.” Dr. Akagi paused to take a sip of her coffee, from her usual travel mug, not that Shinji (who was focused on studying his shoes) was seeing this happen. “And I was hoping that we could finally talk about that a little bit, today.”</p>
<p><em>Maybe it was a mistake to come here today</em>, Shinji thought as he sat there silently, watching his shoes as if afraid they’d run away if he wasn’t keeping an eye on them. <em>Maybe it was a mistake to try therapy at all…what’s the point of being in therapy if Dr. Akagi just wants to make me think…about…distressing and weird things?!</em></p>
<p>“Could I at least ask you what you ended up getting for your birthday?” Dr. Akagi asked, when Shinji didn’t respond.</p>
<p>Shinji <em>knew</em> that she was trying, but this knowledge only made him feel guilty about being so uncooperative. Without taking his eyes off of his footwear, he said, “A-a d-dutch oven.” <em>And not a silver-haired, charming (eww, who the fuck uses the word “charming”?), queer af escort who identifies as a man — shit, wait, I only know that he uses he/him and they/them pronouns, nothing about the gender he actually identifies as…though he certain presents as male…but in any case, nope! No such escort came to my door on the evening of my birthday, and certainly did not talk to me for hours, and we certainly have not become friends since then, nope nope nope nope…</em> He could feel Dr. Akagi’s eyes on him as his cheeks heated up.</p>
<p>“Anything else?”</p>
<p><em>Well I guess a kiss — certainly <strong>not</strong> a kiss! It was nonconsensual, anyway…so I never consented to receiving it, so it was never received, by me…right?</em> Shinji noticed that there was a new grey streak of a scuff mark on his left shoe…</p>
<p class="separator">~~~</p>
<p>Shinji arrived home from his therapy appointment and immediately sank into the couch, thoroughly exhausted. He <em>hated</em> awkward silences, especially when <em>he</em> was the cause of them. <em>Maybe I’ll just take a little nap</em>, he thought, curling up on the couch. <em>Just for a little bit…</em></p>
<p class="separator">~~~</p>
<p>The nap was a mistake, which Shinji had <em>intellectually</em> known but was too <em>emotionally</em> exhausted to really acknowledge. He woke up at 8pm, far past his normal dinner time, with a ravenous hunger for anything remotely edible.</p>
<p>Shortly after he finished his dinner — a warmed up can of soup with rice, hardly his meal of choice — he got a text.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">Hey, just wanted to check in and confirm we’re meeting up tomorrow!</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">I think we agreed on 5:30pm? Your place?</span>
</p>
<p>“Oh shit!” Shinji had completely forgotten that Kaworu was coming over the very next day, what with the emotional fatigue.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Shinji: </span>
  <span class="text">Yes of course! I’ll see you then 🙂</span>
</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">Perfect! See you tomorrow!</span>
</p>
<p>Shinji hadn’t had the time to wash his dishes before he got Kaworu’s text — well he did, technically, but he’d felt so, well, <em>shitty</em> that he couldn’t bring himself to do it (and he was feeling that kind of shitty, that evening, that lead him to do things that made him feel even shittier, like having <em>disgusting</em> dirty dishes lying around). But now, knowing that someone would be coming over tomorrow — not to mention that person was <em>Kaworu</em>, <em>(Not that Kaworu’s like, more than a friend! He’s just a really good friend, of course!)</em> — the dishes were done in no time. As he was drying his soup bowl and spoon, he thought to himself, <em>I can’t believe I didn’t do this like ten minutes ago. I was being so lazy! What’s gotten into me?</em></p>
<p>Dinner dishes done, he set to work prepping the dough for Kaworu’s loaf of bread, which he planned to bake tomorrow right before Kaworu arrived, then vacuumed his entire apartment, cleaned the bathroom (toilet and shower and bathtub), and even wiped all of the windows, which he only did occasionally (well, okay, once or twice a week).</p>
<p>Whereas time had only crawled at a painful snail’s pace before he got Kaworu’s texts, he now found himself wiping down the kitchen island one more time, and it was already 11pm.</p>
<p>“Wow, it’s time to go to bed already?” he said aloud to himself, looking at the time on his phone.</p>
<p>After brushing his teeth and taking a shower (and checking on the bread dough, which was sitting in a bowl on the kitchen counter and neatly covered with a tea towel, just to make sure, one last time, that it was rising). He had been in bed all of five minutes when fell soundly asleep.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>lol i feel incredibly irresponsible for writing a character who is so bad at therapy, because i think it gives therapy a bad rap. BUT this is me saying that therapy is actually helpful when you have the right combination of therapist and client.</p>
<p>(i might also be the only anxious nonbinary person who thinks that it's funny for Shinji to have these panicking moments about whether or not Kaworu identifies as male, given the information he currently has. And by funny, i don't mean like roflmao funny. I mean like just sort of silly, since depending on how you were raised and how your brain works, you have to do differing amounts of retraining yourself to get yourself to stop doing that. So everything's just like this weird, awkward, I-really-want-to-get-this-right-but-my-brain's-patterns-are-all-wrong-and-I-really-need-to-work-on-forming-new-habits!! I'd say that Shinji <em>is</em> trying his best lol.)</p>
<p>thanks for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. The Cooking Lesson</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Friday, June 27, 2026: Shinji invites Kaworu over so he can teach him how to cook. Kaworu discovers a new side of Shinji that he hasn't seen before, and gets a little taste of his own medicine, so to speak.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The minute Shinji got home from work, he kicked off his shoes, put his new favorite cooking dish in the oven, and set it to preheat to 450˚F. Once that was done, he went straight for the bread dough.</p>
<p><em>I know it was rising last night, but what if I made the water too hot and killed off most of the yeast? Ugh, I should use a thermometer next time.</em> He gingerly lifted the tea towel covering the dough to discover that his bread dough had risen to the top of its vessel overnight and now filled the entire bowl. <em>Phew!</em></p>
<p>Once the oven beeped to let him know it had finished preheating, he put on a pair of oven mitts and took out the dutch oven, setting it on the stove. He took the lid off, coated the inside with some cooking spray, and gently set the light, floppy mass of dough into it. Shinji covered the dish once more, then back into the oven it went.</p>
<p>After Shinji shut the oven door, he tugged off the humid oven mitts and wiped a bit of sweat off his forehead as he set the oven timer for thirty minutes. When he checked the time on his phone, it was now 5:15pm.</p>
<p><em>Crap, Kaworu gets here in fifteen minutes!</em> Shinji scrambled to put away his shoes neatly, on the shoe rack in the closet, and washing his face in case he had accrued any grime during the workday (staring at a computer screen), and set about cleaning the kitchen, which mainly meant washing the dish that had held the dough. As he was lathering it in soap, his phone buzzed, and he’d received a text.</p>
<p class="chats">
  <span class="name">Kaworu: </span>
  <span class="text">Hi! Can you buzz me in?</span>
</p>
<p>He was still drying the bowl when he heard a knock at the door. “Coming!” he called out, setting it down again and hastily drying his hands. As he went for the door, he was overcome by <em>deja vu</em>, suddenly throwing Shinji back in time to when Kaworu had last come over—</p>
<p><em>W-wait, wait! No weird thoughts, please!</em> he told his brain, suddenly overcome by butterflies in his stomach (of al things!) as he opened the door. “Hi, Kaworu!”</p>
<p>“Hello, Shinji,” the other man said, smiling. “May I come in?”</p>
<p>“Oh, yeah! Yes, of course.” Shinji stepped aside to make room, hoping he didn’t appear nearly as flustered as he felt.</p>
<p>Kaworu took off his shoes and neatly set them off to the side of the little entranceway. “So, what are we going to make?”</p>
<p>“Well, you said you weren’t really sure about what you wanted to try, so I just thought it would be good to get some basics down?” Shinji began to explain, feeling more comfortable as he settled into cooking mode. “So I’ll show you how to chop some vegetables, stir fry them, and maybe add some meat — if you eat meat, of course,” he added, thinking of Rei’s vegetarian lifestyle, “and then we’ll make fried rice out of the whole thing. How does that sound?” <em>Agh, finally, my stomach doesn’t feel all funny.</em></p>
<p>“Shinji, that sounds <em>lovely</em>,” Kaworu gushed, a smirk on his face. “And of course I eat <em>meat</em>, that’s in my job description, no?” he joked, <em>still</em> smirking, as Shinji’s face flushed red immediately.</p>
<p>Though he was flustered all over again, so it was kinda hard to process anything outside of his own embarrassment, Shinji could’ve sworn Kaworu grinned ever wider, the redder he got.</p>
<p class="separator">~~~</p>
<p>Normally, Kaworu was <em>quite</em> good with his hands, in <em>many</em> ways. But for some reason, here he was standing in Shinji’s kitchen, holding an onion in one hand and a knife in the other, and he was simply at a loss about what to do with himself. At the moment, Shinji was preoccupied by stopping a beeping timer and checking on the oven, where something very bread-y smelling was baking inside a handsome, bright red dish. Kaworu just stood there, watching him as Shinji removed the lid. <em>It’s not as if I’m lacking in coordination,</em> he mused.</p>
<p>“I need to take the lid off after baking it for thirty minutes,” Shinji explained. “Watch out,” he said, as he took the lid out and set it carefully no the stove — presumably to cool — and shut the oven door. He finally turned back to face Kaworu, removing his oven mitts — blue, they complimented Shinji’s eyes quite well, Kaworu noticed. “Okay, so where were we?”</p>
<p>Kaworu continued to stand there with the onion and the knife, with a very different sort of smile no his face: sheepish, almost apologetic.</p>
<p>“Have you never cut an onion before?” Shinji asked.</p>
<p>“Nope,” Kaworu said, and this time <em>he</em> was the one blushing.</p>
<p>Shinji was already bending over to retrieve a cutting board from one of the lower cabinets. “It’s a little bit tricky, and there’s that thing where the onion can make you cry sometimes — though I put this onion in the fridge even though it’s perfectly fine to store onions outside, you know? But supposedly — and I’m not sure if I buy this completely, but it’s worked in the past — this should make it less mean to you, I hope!”</p>
<p>Kaworu found himself standing next to Shinji at the kitchen island as Shinji used another onion to demonstrate how to peel it. Kaworu was somewhat distracted though because Shinji seemed to have pulled the onion right out of thin air, like some sort of magic trick. <em>It’s certainly interesting to see Shinji be so…assertive, like this,</em> he thought as he attempted to mimic Shinji’s actions on his own onion. <em>It’s…kinda really hot.</em> Eventually, it was time for his next task: dicing the onion.</p>
<p>“Be careful with the knife,” Shinji said. “I’m pretty sure you need those fingers.”</p>
<p>Kaworu nearly choked on his own spit and began coughing. <em>Jesus, get your head out of the gutter!</em> he scolded himself as he continued to cough. <em>He meant the piano, of course!</em> Kaworu felt extremely silly for how distracted he was by how attractive Shinji was when he was being so self-assured (not that he didn’t normally find him cute, but the 180˚ difference in how Shinji was acting and carrying himself caught Kaworu quite off-guard).</p>
<p>“Are you okay, Kaworu?!” shinji said, with genuine alarm that confirmed for Kaworu that he really had uttered that with playing the piano in mind. “Do you need a glass of water?”</p>
<p><em>Damn, he really has no idea what he’s doing to me,</em> Kaworu thought as he tried to catch his breath. <em>Not that he should! This is probably what I get for knowingly having a crush on a straight guy.</em> “I’m…fine,” he finally said, voice hoarse.</p>
<p>“You sure?” Shinji asked, worried.</p>
<p>“Yeah, I just…momentarily forgot how to breathe.” Shinji laughed good-naturedly at Kaworu’s white lie. “I’m going to cut up the onion now.” Shinji nodded, so Kaworu took up the knife and attempted to cut the onion in half—</p>
<p>“Wait a second!” Suddenly Shinji was directly behind Kaworu, arms snaking along his and hands over Kaworu’s own. “Hold it like this,” he said, adjusting Kaworu’s grip on both the onion and knife. “You would have definitely cut yourself if you’d continued like that.” Shinji’s far more practiced hands guided Kaworu’s own through the first few tentative chops before Shinji finally let go, but he remained almost just as close to Kaworu as he continued watching over Kaworu’s shoulder, closely inspecting his solo debut as an onion-chopper. If it weren’t for the mortal peril Kaworu was experiencing, wielding a very sharp blade in dangerous proximity to his fingertips, Kaworu was sure he would have been infinitely more distracted by how Shinji was hovering less than an inch away.</p>
<p>“Very good,” Shinji commented, seemingly unaware for once of how close in proximity he was to Kaworu still. “And much safer, too.”</p>
<p>“Thank you,” Kaworu replied, fighting a slight stinging sensation in his eyes. Once he was done — which felt like an eternity, especially as he heard Shinji expertly dicing his onion right next to him and finishing three times faster, at least — and he scraped all the diced onion into a waiting bowl filled with Shinji’s own neatly cut onion cube, Shinji handed him a tissue.</p>
<p>“You okay?” the other man asked as Kaworu dabbed at his eyes.</p>
<p>“Yes! Thanks to you.” He smiled, even as his eyes burned a little.</p>
<p class="separator">~~~</p>
<p>Despite Kaworu’s complete lack of cooking skills (and probably only because of Shinji’s overabundance of practical knowledge, ability, and, moreover, patience), they were finally able to sit down to eat at 7:30.</p>
<p>“How is it?” Shinji asked him, eagerly, at Kaworu took a bite.</p>
<p>“It’s awesome! I can’t believe I’ve never made fried rice before, and it was so easy?” Kaworu said in between bites. “I can’t believe all I needed to do was put the stuff in a pan and then pour a bunch of sesame oil and soy sauce on everything.”</p>
<p>“Haha, I’m glad you like it! And now you’ll have something to eat besides…what were you making before?” Shinji began digging in himself.</p>
<p>“I don’t even think you want to know,” Kaworu said, grimacing inwardly.</p>
<p>“And besides,” Shinji continued on, “because you can make fried rice, now you can make almost any kind of stir fry — it’s basically all the same, minus the rice.”</p>
<p>“Thank you so much, Shinji.” Kaworu impulsively reached out and put his hand over Shinji’s.</p>
<p>“Of course! This was a lot of fun.” Shinji then surprised Kaworu for the hundredth time that day by turning his hand over, their fingers lacing together as he gave Kaworu’s hand a squeeze.</p>
<p>Kaworu’s heart shipped a beat as he thought, <em>What the hell am I doing?!</em> but by then, he’d already squeezed Shinji’s hand back.</p>
<p class="separator">~~~</p>
<p>Later, while Shinji was cleaning up the kitchen — and reluctantly letting Kaworu help (though only after he’d insisted on helping tidy up the mess he made while chopping the veggies), Kaworu suddenly asked, “So, Shinji, since this was so amazing…how can I repay you?”</p>
<p>“There’s no need!” Shinji tried to reassure him as he washed the dishes. <em>Are we really going to do this crazy Asian American let’s-fight-to-the-death-over-who-gets-to-pay-the-bill-this-time, basically? Well…here goes nothing.</em> “I honestly had a great time, too, and that’s a reward in and of itself.”</p>
<p>“Seriously though, Shinji, you gave me the <em>gift</em> of <em>cooking</em>. Is it not appropriate that I give you something of equivalent, life-long worth in return?”</p>
<p>Shinji was somewhat taken aback. <em>Kaworu says such strange things…well, actually, there was that <strong>one</strong> thing, but there’s no way I can ask him for…!</em> “I’m telling you,” he said, finding his voice again, “you really don’t have to do anything for me!”</p>
<p>“See, Shinji, the thing is though that I <em>want</em> to.”</p>
<p>Shinji felt a light touch on his arm, and when he turned to find Kaworu standing beside him doing an excellent impression of a sad puppy, he was like a deer in the headlights. “Well, umm, maybe…” he stuttered.</p>
<p>“What is it?” Kaworu asked, still looking ta him with those pleading, irresistible puppy dog eyes.</p>
<p>“N-never mind!” Shinji finally broke eye contact returning his full attention — or at least as many brain cells he could get to not focus on Kaworu standing right there — to the dishes. “You’re really busy, right? Full time masters student and you have a job! I shouldn’t bother you…hey!” Shinji looked up once more, to see…</p>
<p>Kaworu had reached into the soap bubbles and pulled out the dirty pan, still caked in bits of fried rice and glimmering with the remnants of sesame oil. Kaworu held it protectively, away from Shinji, his eyes bright with mischief. “Shinji, I’m not going to let you wash this pan until you tell me what you were thinking about.”</p>
<p><em>Dammit!</em> Shinji cursed inwardly. “Don’t hold the dirty dishes hostage!” He reached out to grab the pan but Kaworu easily stepped back out of Shinji’s reach.</p>
<p>“Please?” he pleaded, using his puppy eyes again — though Shinji was far more distracted by the dripping, dirty pan. “It can’t possibly be something so terrible.”</p>
<p>Shinji felt massively conflicted. _I really want to wash that dish at this point…but agh! Did Kaworu figure out I have a weird thing fine, but first give it here.” Shinji held out his hand for the pan, and Kaworu finally handed it to him, though somewhat hesitantly.</p>
<p>“So…what was it?” Kaworu couldn’t help but ask again once the pan was safely back in the sink.</p>
<p>Shinji just stood there for a moment, watching as the pan filled with water and sunk back down, to soak. “…Can I finish the dishes first, please?”</p>
<p>“Okay,” Kaworu said as he set to work drying the already clean dishes, and Shinji let him, his exasperated brain concluding that maybe this was his guest’s way of apologizing.</p>
<p class="separator">~~~</p>
<p>Once the dishes were all put away, and were no longer a source of anxiety to Shinji, Kaworu was dying to ask him once more. “so, what was it?” As the words left his mouth, though, he worried, <em>Shit, I hope I didn’t cross too many boundaries here.</em></p>
<p>Shinji sighed. “Well…I was wondering, if it isn’t too much trouble…”</p>
<p>When Shinji failed to continue to speak and began looking squarely at his very clean floor, Kaworu felt impelled to say, “Hey, I offered! Unless it’s something super illegal — or, err, mildly illegal, like armed robbery or identity theft but like torrenting and weed are fine, I guess agh…” He paused, trying to compose himself, then said, “In any case, you’re probably fine!”</p>
<p>“Well, umm,” Shinji said, nervously, “would you give me…a little p-piano lesson, maybe?”</p>
<p><em>Oh wow, I actually had no idea that’s what he had in mind.</em> Kaworu was pleasantly surprised by Shinji’s request. “Of course! I’d <em>love</em> to. When?”</p>
<p>Shinji had apparently been flustered beyond his breaking point. “Ahh!!! I can’t decide these things!” He buried his face in his hands as he leaned against the island.</p>
<p>Now it was Kaworu’s turn to be nervous. “Are you okay?” he asked, worries creeping into him. <em>Shit, I went too far, didn’t I…</em></p>
<p>Shinji let out another sigh — though this time, he had more of a bemused smile on his lips, and not as much anxiety. “Umm, yeah…I just, have no more energy for decision-making. Used it all up cooking. So you pick the time.”</p>
<p>“Fair enough,” Kaworu said, nodding. “How about next Saturday?”</p>
<p>“Okay, that sounds good,” Shinji exhaled in relief. “Thank you so much, Kaworu.”</p>
<p>“Of course,” Kaworu said, Shinji looking away again, though not quite as exhausted seeming as earlier, but he still felt guilty about earlier, so… “…and Shinji?”</p>
<p>“Yeah?” He looked back up at Kaworu, somewhat surprised.</p>
<p>“It…really bothered you when I took the pan, right?”</p>
<p>Shinji stared at him, before looking away and nodding.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry for kidnapping the pan,” Kaworu said, his voice so serious it almost made him start cracking up but for his absolute desire to show Shinji that he <em>did</em> care about his feelings — well, at least the ones he was allowed to under the pretension of friendship.</p>
<p>Maybe Kaworu’d been a little too heavy with the seriousness, because Shinji’s immediately flustered, sputtering out, “I-it’s okay! It’s…fine, as long as you don’t do that again.”</p>
<p>Kaworu raised his right hand. “I swear I will never again bother Ikari Shinji while he is washing the dishes.”</p>
<p>Shinji was immediately trying to get him to <em>stop</em>. “It’s alright, Kaworu! You don’t have to do something, so, s-so drastic a-as—“</p>
<p>“Swear an oath?” Kaworu finished for him, his eyes on shinji the whole time. Shinji nodded. “I just want you to know that I value your boundaries, since you’re a valuable person, Shinji.”</p>
<p>Shinji went red all over, and Kaworu almost felt guilty about how he’d let his mouth run so much when Shinji said, “Y-you’re a valuable person, too, Kaworu! I-I’m not exactly sure what you see in me…but you’re a good friend. So you’re forgiven, alright?”</p>
<p>“Okay, thank you,” kaworu said, finally backing off. “You’re a good friend too, Shinji.”</p>
<p>“Th-thank you!” Shinji looked positively beet-like. “So, umm, have you played any new games lately?”</p>
<p>Kaworu smiled. <em>Smooth change of topic, heh.</em> “Well…”</p>
<p>And they spent the remainder of the evening like that, just talking and chatting.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>lol kaworu making shinji all flustered at first was partially inspired by watching queer eye, season 5 episode 7</p>
<p>this whole chapter though was inspired by a scene in an old kawoshin fanfic on ff.net, Touch, chapter 1.</p>
<p>i love headcanon-ing Kaworu as not being that good at cooking (though still better than Misato), though he's pretty useless here</p>
<p>i need more Assertive!Shinji in fics in my life. so cooking!Shinji in this fic is my outlet for that lol.</p>
<p>thank you for reading! i hope to continue to post weekly-ish at least until I start school at the end of september :)</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading, if you got this far!</p><p>I goofed with the dates and so let's pretend there's an alternate universe in which during the year 2026, when Shinji would turn 25, the 30th of May is a Friday, and thus the 6th of June is a Friday too. This actually occurs in 2025, but he would be only 24, and I feel like 24 years old is somehow not enough pressure lol. There's something about being halfway through your 20s that seems to bring the heat on, plus you're far out enough from either high school or college that you're definitely not a kid. And, your brain has finally finished developing by then, so maybe people will finally be adults? (Wishful thinking, I know.)</p><p>I'm going to try to post everything basically within the date it would be occurring, lol. (I've been planning this for way too long.) So if you enjoyed, there will be new chapters soon!</p><p>(And if you didn't enjoy, there will also be new chapters soon lmao.)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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